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COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT 



SAID THE ROSE 

AND OTHER LYRICS 



By George Henry Miles 

Christine, and Other Poems 

Mohammed 

Essay on Hamlet 

LoRETTo ; OR, The Choice. A Novel 

The Truce of God. A Novel 

The Governess. A Novel 



SAID THE ROSE 

AND OTHER LYRICS 



BY 

GEORGE HENRY MILES 

k 

LATE PROFISSOR OF LITERATURE IN MOUNT ST, MARY's 
COLLEGE, MARYLAND 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY 

JOHN CHURTON COLLINS 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 

LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

1907 



U8RABY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDtes Received 
MAY 15 I90r 

VCppyn«ht Entry 

CLASS A XX6., No. 

COPY e. • 



^C-) 



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•'>'^ 



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Copyright, igoy 
By Frederick B. Miles 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



Grateful thanks are due to Mrs. George 
H. Miles, the poet's widow ; to the Reverend 
Thomas E. Cox, pastor of St. Basil's Church, 
Chicago ; to Professor Ernest Lagarde, of Mount 
St. Mary's College, Frederick Co., Maryland j 
to Mr. Eugene L. Didier, Baltimore, and espe- 
cially to John Jerome Rooney, Esq., of New 
York, for their kind encouragement and in- 
valuable help in preparing this volume. 

F. B. M. 

New York, February, 1907 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Introduction ix 

Said the Rose • . . 3 

Raphael Sanzio 7 

Marcela 18 

She Will Return , 22 

Under the Tree, Love :...., 24 

San SisTO 27 

The Bird's Song 30 

Inkermann 32 

All Souls' Day 45 

The Country Doctor 51 

A Card from the Violets 57 

The Last Snow-Wreath 59 

The Albatross 62 

Beatrice 65 

La Velata 71 

Donna , 72 

Blight and Bloom 75 

Shemselnihar .......... 78 

vii 



Contents 

Page 

Lazarus , 80 

The King's Speech 83 

Aladdin's Palace 88 

Byron 105 

The Ivory Crucifix 108 

Youth il^ 

Absence 116 

Parting „ . . 1 1 7 

The Bridesmaids' Greeting 119 

The Bride's Reply 121 

The Knight's Lament for his Steed . . 123 

Forty To-day 127 

SONGS 

Bill and I 133 

Fidelis .136 

Lady Bird 138 

Oh! the Year has Lost its Light . . . I4.0 

Gabriel's Song 141 

A Lullaby 143 

** Contraband Now" 144 

God Save the South! 147 

Where is the Freeman Found ? .... i 50 

The Devil's Visit to 153 



Vlll 



INTRODUCTION 

MORE than thirty-five years have 
passed since George Henry 
Miles, the author of the pieces 
collected in this volume, died in the 
prime of life and promise ; and Frederick 
B. Miles, having resolved to present in 
a permanent form such of his brother's 
writings as seemed most worthy of pres- 
entation, has asked me to write a short 
introduction to them. 

I do this with pleasure ; firstly, because 
I sympathize with my old friend's desire 
to pay this tribute to a beloved memory, 
and secondly, because I quite agree with 
him that much which came from his 
brother's pen is intrinsically well worth 
preserving, having interest and distinction ; 
ix 



Introduction 



that some of his lyrics, notably such a 
lyric as Said the Rose^ have the note of 
really exquisite beauty and pathos, and 
that in addition to his claims as a poet he 
is fairly entitled, both as a dramatist and a 
critic, to a niche, if a modest one, in the 
history of American Literature. 

It is clear that he owed more to nature 
than to art, and was very intolerant some- 
times of the labors of the file. It would 
indeed be easy to point to many poems 
where the distance between mediocrity and 
distinction is plainly measured by the ab- 
sence of what patience and industry would 
have supplied. He was evidently one of 
that class which partly from temperament 
and partly from circumstances frequently 
fail to do justice to their natural qualifica- 
tions and powers. Eminently receptive 
and sympathetic, and, even as a young 
boy, with strong literary tastes, he appears 
to have been too early thrown back on 
himself, finding neither sufficient stimulus 

X 



Introduction 



nor nutriment in the society of his contem- 
poraries at home and at the University. 
In his days there was less intellectual life 
in these seminaries now so alert, less stim- 
ulative emulation among the students, less 
love of Art and Letters, or even curiosity 
about them. The standard of instruction 
was lower, both in what it imparted and 
at what it aimed. 

These unpropitious surroundings in 
early days are, one cannot but feel, far 
more responsible for Miles' limitations and 
defects than his natural parts. It was his 
misfortune to roam desultorily through the 
realms of literature without either stand- 
ards or touchstones consciously or uncon- 
sciously acquired,and unlike kindred spirits 
in England, — such, for example, as Keats, 
— without any literary tradition behind 
him. He had not the puissant originahty 
which enabled men like Whitman and Bret 
Harte to waive books and culture aside, 
and, drawing straight from themselves and 



Introduction 



from life, pursue an independent path. 
He was much more nearly allied both in 
taste and temper to the school of Lowell, 
Holmes, and Longfellow, but he had 
neither their discipline, their scholarship, 
their leisure, nor their surroundings, for his 
home was Baltimore, not Boston. Nor 
were the circumstances under which he 
began, and under which he was destined to 
pursue his literary career, more favorable 
to the realization of that ideal at which 
every true poet instinctively and indeed 
necessarily aims. 

The wonder is, that possessing, and in 
unusual measure, the gifts of the literary 
and dramatic craftsman, deft readiness of 
invention and of assimilation, and fluency 
and facility of expression, — the gifts, in 
fine, which enable men to excel in the pro- 
duction of what appeals to the moment, — 
and having also every temptation to confine 
himself to such productions, he should yet 
have kept alive a more exalted ambition 
xii 



Introduction 



and have remained fairly loyal to higher 
ideals. The world, it is true, judges men 
not by what might have been, but by what 
is, and a man is remembered only because 
he cannot be forgotten. Yet those who 
loved and admired Miles are justified in 
emphasizing the fact that death struck him 
down just when circumstances had enabled 
him to abandon ephemeral for solid litera- 
ture and to devote himself seriously to 
what leads to fame. Whatever may be 
thought of its main thesis and of some of 
his minor contentions, no more vigorous, 
subtle, and original contribution to Ameri- 
can Shakespearian criticism has ever been 
made than his Essay on Hamlet^ written 
about a year before his death. This was 
to have been followed by similar essays 
on Macbeth, Othello, Henry IV, and Lear, 
and it was while working at these, with 
Macbeth half finished, that death brushed 
t\\Q pen out of his hands. 

His life, though a very busy, was not 



Xlll 



Introduction 



an eventful one. He was born on July 
31, 1824, the year in which Byron died, 
in the city of Baltimore, where he spent 
most of his short life. He received his 
education at Mount St. Mary's College, 
near Emmitsburg, Frederick County, 
Maryland, at the foot of the Blue Ridge 
Mountains, a beautiful picturesque spot 
about twelve miles south of the battlefield 
of Gettysburg. By special arrangement, 
for he was too young to enter in the regu- 
lar way, he was admitted to the primary 
department of that college in his tenth 
year, and remained there, gradually passing 
to the higher grades, for more than nine 
years. He took his Bachelor's degree 
with honors on June 28, 1843, ^^^ month 
before attaining his nineteenth birthday, 
and his A.M. degree one year later. The 
nature of his education and the character 
generally of the college differed little from 
what in those days was usual in such sem- 
inaries ; but Miles, whatever he owed to 
xiv 



Introduction 



the place intellectually, had always a great 
affection for it, "His love for his Alma 
Mater," writes one who knew him well, 
"its charming neighborhood, its alumni, 
its professors, and above all its President, 
the Rev. Dr. John McCaffrey, was with him 
a life-long passion. He loved that moun- 
tain district as Wordsworth loved the Lake 
Country. In after life he was never hap- 
pier than when he could run up there, 
alone or with a friend, for a brief holiday 
at 'the mountain,' as they lovingly called 
it, and go long walks, sometimes with gun 
and game bag, among its vales and hills, 
for he was a strong athletic man and an 
excellent sportsman." 

On leaving college he studied law in 
Baltimore, his native place, with J. H. B. 
Latrobe, a leading attorney and barrister 
of that city, and afterwards joined his 
friend E. Henry Webster, subsequently a 
senator, with whom he practised in part- 
nership for a few years at the bar. But 



Introduction 



his heart was neither in the law nor in his 
business. He had early contracted a love 
for literature and poetry ; indeed the taste 
was innate in him, and he soon found, as 
so many others have done, that, 

"Where such fairies once have danced 
The grass will never grow." 

And now began, collaterally with the 
uncongenial profession, his literary career. 
There was at that time but little sympathy 
at Baltimore with art and letters ; the life 
there was too social and easy. Of conge- 
nial literary society he found almost none. 
The best of educations for an artist and 
man of letters is the reciprocity of enthu- 
siasm and aspiration with equals and 
superiors; but Miles stood almost alone. 
There were too few with whom he could 
interchange ideas ; there was almost no 
one to whom he could turn for guidance 
and counsel. In what to him was all 
in all there was hardly a soul who had. 



Introduction 



and few who even affected to have, the 
smallest interest. On the contrary, there 
were many who looked askance on a 
young lawyer scribbling novels and poetry 
when he ought to have been building up 
a business. But Miles went his own way, 
defiant and unperturbed. 

In September, 1844, just after he had 
completed his twentieth year, he began his 
first tragedy, Michael di Lando^ Gonfalonier 
of Florence. Between that date and the com- 
pletion of the tragedy in January, 1 847, he 
wrote three short novels : The Truce of God^ 
Loretto, and The Governess. One brought 
him a prize ; each one became very pop- 
ular and passed through many editions ; 
indeed they are still in continual demand, 
particularly as school prizes. In addition 
to these novels he wrote a number of 
fugitive pieces, both in poetry and prose, 
the greater portion of which remains still 
uncollected. In January, 1847, Di Lando 
was sent to Edwin Forrest, at that time the 
^ xvii 



Introduction 



leading American tragedian and an enthu- 
siastic patron of promising dramatic ability. 
Forrest was a man of noble character, who 
did all in his power to raise the character 
of the drama in America. He offered a 
prize of one thousand dollars for the best 
original tragedy by an American writer. 
He established also near Philadelphia, 
his native place, a home for aged and 
indigent actors, amply endowed, which 
remains still a worthy memorial of his 
philanthropy. 

Though Miles' play of Di Lando was 
not accepted by Forrest, he read it care- 
fully and formed a very favorable opinion 
of the talents of the young dramatist. On 
returning the manuscript on January lo, 
1848, he wrote to him at length, giving him 
much friendly advice, and suggesting that 
he should compete for the prize of one 
thousand dollars which he had publicly 
offered for the best original tragedy in 
five acts. Miles was not slow in respond- 
xviii 



Introduction 



ing to this suggestion. He set vigorously 
to work, and produced a tragedy on the 
subject of Mohammed. How he fared 
is recorded in the following letter from 
Forrest : 

Philadelphia, Dec, 7, 1848. 

To George H. Miles, Esq., 

Dear Sir, — I have just finished reading the 
large number of Mss. with which my country- 
men have favored me in consequence of certain 
proposals made by me in June, 1847. Among 
all the plays which have been presented to 
me I do not find one that I could venture to 
put upon the stage ; but as your tragedy of 
Mohammed has been considered superior to all 
the others as a dramatic poem I herein enclose 
you a cheque for the sum of one thousand 
dollars. 

It is my intention to visit Baltimore in a ^0.^7 
days, where I hope to have the pleasure of mak- 
ing your personal acquaintance. 

With sentiments of the highest esteem, 
I am, my dear sir. 

Yours very truly, 

Edwin P^orrest. 
xix 



Introduction 



Young Miles may well have been proud 
of his triumph, for there were nearly a 
hundred competitors ; but he afterwards 
said with characteristic modesty, " Mine 
was the best of a bad bunch." Not long 
afterwards he met Forrest, and they became 
and remained intimate friends during the 
rest of their lives. In 1850 Mohammed 
was published. It justified Forrest's ver- 
dict, for though it was frequently per- 
formed, it was not a success on the stage. 
It has both too much and too little action, 
stagnating in the first part in diffuse pro- 
tracted dialogues, and in the fourth and 
fifth acts overweighted with multiplicity 
of incident. It lacks proportion and bal- 
ance. Mohammed is simply the Moham- 
med of history cleverly galvanized. The 
minor characters, though with enough in- 
dividuality to present them in contrast, 
remain little more than lay figures. And 
yet it has good touches, as when Sophian 
exclaims, 

XX 



Introduction 



. . . Who consigned my life 
unto thy keeping ? 
Mohammed. Thou — by blasphemy ! 

or again : 

Moh. . . . Love blinds thee, Fatima. 
Fat. I must be blind. 
I see no pity in a father's heart. 

The year after Mohammed was pub- 
lished Miles was sent by the United 
States government as bearer of diplomatic 
despatches to the Court of Spain. This 
mission included also another special duty. 
A large picture with life-size figures for 
the rotunda of the capitol at Washington 
was now in course of designing, and it was 
necessary to obtain authentic representa- 
tions of sixteenth-century Spanish armor, 
military costumes, weapons, flags, and the 
like, to assist the artist. These Miles was 
instructed to procure. The subject of 
the picture was the discovery of the Mis- 
sissippi River by the famous Spanish 
xxi 



Introduction 



explorer, Hernando de Soto. This drew 
Miles* attention to the romantic career of 
that extraordinary man, and suggested his 
third tragedy, De Soto^ produced some 
four years later. From Spain he made 
a short journey to Italy for a visit to an 
uncle, his father's brother, who lived in 
Florence. Then, returning to Baltimore, 
he resumed his dramatic and other lit- 
erary labors, but found it uphill work, 
though he made some political speeches 
which were well received. 

Restless and dissatisfied, he resolved to 
quit Baltimore for New York, hoping 
to find a more interesting and profitable 
career. Here for a time he remained, 
and found som.e very good friends, one 
of them E. W. Tiers, whose daughter he 
afterwards married, but made no headway 
professionally ; so, abandoning New York, 
he returned to his mingled law and litera- 
ture at Baltimore. This was a great mis- 
take; he should have tried Boston ! 
xxii 



Introduction 



In 1854 Miss Laura Keene, the popular 
English actress, produced a comedy written 
by him, Blight and Bloom, which had for a 
time a great run in New York and other 
cities. At this time the Crimean War 
broke out, and in 1855 a spirited ballad 
from his pQn,Inkermann, commemorated a 
battle which inspired many other poets on 
the opposite side of the Atlantic. In the 
following year his tragedy of De Soto was 
produced by James E. Murdoch, an actor 
then very eminent and second in pop- 
ularity only to Forrest. It was acted with 
great success at two theatres at Baltimore, 
Murdoch himself taking the principal part, 
and for many years it continued to be 
played in all parts of the country. It seems 
now a rather extravagant production in 
the style of the heroic plays of the Restora- 
tion and is no longer performed. 

Miles sometim-es varied his literary pur- 
suits with lecturing, visiting, among other 
places, Boston, where he met Emerson, 
xxiii 



Introduction 



Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Holmes. 
One of his friends, George Sumner, who 
had accompanied him to Europe when he 
made the journey to Spain, introduced him 
to his brother Charles, the senator, who 
was then one of the most prominent advo- 
cates for the abolition of slavery. With all 
or most of these eminent men he became 
more or less intimate. George Sumner 
visited him afterwards in Baltimore. It is 
greatly to be regretted that shortly before 
his death Miles destroyed nearly all his 
correspondence, so that none of the letters 
he is known to have exchanged with them 
have been preserved. Meanwhile he had 
produced many of the poems which were 
afterwards collected in the "Christine" 
volume, and an interesting letter from 
Oliver Wendell Holmes addressed to Mr. 
Fields the publisher, who had asked his 
opinion of three of the poems, — namely, 
InkermanUj Sleep on I afterwards published 
as Beatrice^ and Raphael Sanzio^ — was 
xxiv 



Introduction 



published by Mrs. Fields in the Century 
Magazine of February, 1895. The letter 
was as follows : 

My dear Mr. Fields, — I return the three 
poems you sent me, having read them with 
much gratification. Each of them has its pecu- 
liar merits and defects, as it seems to me, but all 
show poetical feeling and artistic skill. 

Sleep on! is the freshest and most individual 
in its character. You will see my pencil com- 
ment at the end of it. Inkermann is compara- 
tively slipshod and careless, though not without 
lyric fire and vivid force of description. Raphael 
San%io would deserve higher praise if it were 
not so closely imitative. 

In truth, all these poems have a genuine 
sound ; they are full of poetical thought and 
breathed out in softly modulated words. The 
music of Sleep on ! (now called Beatrice^ is very 
sweet, and I have never seen heroic verse in 
which the rhyme was less obtrusive or the 
rhythm more diffluent. Still it would not be 
fair to speak in these terms of praise without 
pointing out the transparent imitativeness which 
is common to all these poems. 

XXV 



Introduction 



Inkermann is a poetical Macaulay stewed. 
The whole flow of its verse and resonant pas- 
sion of its narrative are borrowed from the Lays 
of Ancient Rome. There are many crashing lines 
in it and the story is rather dashingly told, but 
it is very inferior in polish, and even correctness, 
to both the other poems. I have marked some 
of its errata. 

Raphael^ good as it is, is nothing more than 
Browning browned over. Every turn of expres- 
sion, and the whole animus, so to speak, is taken 
from those poetical monologues of his. Call it 
an imitation and it is excellent. 

The best of the three poems, then, is Sleep on ! 
I see Keats in it, and one or both of the Brown- 
ings ; but though the form is borrowed the pas- 
sion is genuine, the fire has passed along there, 
and the verse has followed before the ashes 
were quite cool. 

Talent, certainly ; taste very fine for the 
melodies of language ; deep, quiet sentiment. 
Genius ? If beardless, yea ; if in sable silvered, 

— and I think this cannot be a very young hand, 

— why then ... we will suspend our opinion. 

Faithfully yours, 

O. W, Holmes. 

xxvi 



Introduction 



Miles wrote Inkermann at the age of 30, 
Sleep on ! at 31, and Raphael Sanzio when 
just 32. 

At Ford's Theatre, Baltimore, in 1858, 
his five-act comedy Senor Valient e was 
produced with the distinguished actor 
J. W. Wallack in the leading part. This 
was one of the most successful of his 
dramas and had a great run, being acted 
simultaneously at Baltimore, New York, 
and Boston. At Philadelphia it was played 
by a very distinguished caste, — Wallack, 
Wheatleigh, J. S. Clarke, and Mrs. John 
Drew, — all of whom were artists of the 
first class. In calling it a " comedy " Miles 
was presumably using the word in the 
Spanish sense, as it recalls, though not in 
diction or merit, the comedies of De Vega 
and Calderon. Perhaps the most which 
can be said is that it shows that Miles 
had become no contemptible craftsman in 
melodrama. 

He now became employed in writing 
xxvii 



Introduction 



and adapting pieces for the stage. He 
had become very intimate with John T. 
Ford, the well-known manager, — a kind 
and good man, who was the director of 
two theatres, one in Baltimore, another in 
Washington. For him Miles produced 
in 1859 a three-act comedy, Mary s Birth- 
day^ a sprightly trifle, which had a long 
run in Boston. He wrote another, The 
Seven Sisters, a play which had a direct 
bearing on the momentous question then 
agitating the country, the Seven Sisters 
symbolizing the seven states who were the 
first to secede in the great Civil War. 
This drama ran for two winters in New 
York, the winters, namely, of 1861 and 
1862. 

But before the production of this play 
he had undertaken duties very different 
from those in which he had hitherto been 
engaged. In September, 1858, he had 
been invited to fill the chair of English 
Literature at his old university, Mount 
xxviii 



Introduction 



Saint Mary's, his appointment being syn- 
chronous with the fiftieth anniversary of 
the founding of the college. It was for 
this occasion that he wrote the most vig- 
orous of his poems, Aladdin s Palace^ 
which he recited at the celebration. The 
poem must have astonished those who 
knew Miles only by the sort of work with 
which his name was popularly associated. 
To the younger members of his audience 
it must have rung out like a trumpet call. 
With all the enthusiasm of Emerson and 
with a trenchant power which at times 
recalls Churchill at his best, he denounces 
all that was then degrading and emasculat- 
ing a large part of American society and 
politics, — the gross materialism, the sordid 
greed, the cult of mediocrity, the puny 
frivolity, the neglect of everything in edu- 
cation, theory, and example that elevates 
and refines : 

O land of Lads and Liberty and Dollars ! 
O Nation first in schools and last in scholars ! 
xxix 



Introductu 



ion 



Where few are ignorant, yet none excel, 
Whose peasants read, whose statesmen scarcely 

spell; 
Of what avail that science light the way 
When dwindling Senates totter to decay, — 
Like some tall poplar withered at the head. 
Our middle green, but all the summit dead. 

. . . great Diana! when we're only known 
In courts where Adams trod and Franklin shone. 
By mute Ambassadors who grandly scorn to 
Maim any language save the one they 're born to. 

Of what avail the boast of steam and cable 
If doomed to grovel 'neath the curse of Babel ? 

The lads who listened to him were 
not likely to forget such a couplet as the 
following : 

Toil on, toil on, there 's no such word as fail, 
Heaven sends the wind if we but set the sail. 

How admirably is a type of man, com- 
mon in every age, sarcastically hit off in 
this : 

XXX 



hit7^oduction 



Too modest to bestow lest men applaud, 
Faith just too feeble to invest with God ; 
Just zeal sufficient to shun godless knowledge, 
And just too little to endow a college ! 

And there is beauty and true pathos in 
the following, where he is looking back on 
one of America's typical heroes, Daniel 
Webster : 

Know ye the fields that smooth the Pilgrim coast, 
The lawn's soft slope in azure ocean lost, 
The garden bounded by the billow's foam. 
The gables stately as a Baron's home ? 
Approach : along the cornland and the wold 
October dies in crimson and in gold ; 
That giant elm has scarce a score of leaves 
To shade the voiceless nest beneath the eaves. 
See the bright Sabbath morning silent break. 
Save where the wild-fowl fans his tiny lake. 
Save where, with ceaseless wail, the warning sea 
Chants its one awful word — "Eternity." 

Ah, Seth, unload the rifle — coil the line 

Let the coot fly — the haddock lash the brine 

O'er the mute hills, untracked, the wild deer 

run — 
The angler sleeps — thv hunter's deeds are done ! 
xxxi 



Introduction 



Steal in with muffled tread — the struggle past, 
Released from thought, the grand brow rests at 
last. 

Folded the hands that never rose in v/rath 
Unless to sweep a traitor from his path ; 
Dim the dark eye before whose rapt command 
Disunion, like a spectre, fled the land. 

In the year following his appointment 
to the chair at Mount Saint Mary's he 
was married to Miss Adeline Tiers, whose 
father, like himself, an alumnus of Saint 
Mary's, he had known from boyhood. 
Some years back his parents had bought a 
country place, " Hayland," near the col- 
lege, and, on the marriage of his daughter, 
Mr. Tiers presented the young couple 
with a charming country house known as 
" Thornbrook " not far from Hayland, so 
that he was most happily settled close to 
his own and to his wife's parents. 

His restless energy did not confine itself 
to the duties of his chair, and he continued 
his dramatic and other literary work. For- 
xxxii 



Introduction 



rest had commissioned him to write a 
tragedy on Oliver Cromwell, but retired 
from the stage before the drama was com- 
pleted. But Ford took the play over in 
conjunction with E. L. Davenport, who on 
Forrest's decline had become the leading 
tragedian in America. His Hamlet is his- 
torical and still remembered. But Crom- 
well, though finished, was not performed. 
Poor Ford had been completely prostrated 
by a terrible catastrophe, — the destruc- 
tion of his theatre at Washington by fire, 
attended, unhappily, with the loss of many 
lives, — and Davenport, after an eight 
weeks' engagement in Philadelphia, had 
been disabled by gout. " I live in the 
hope," he says in a letter to Miles, "to 
produce Cromwell some day not very dis- 
tant." But the day not very distant never 
arrived. Davenport died while the play was 
in rehearsal, and Oliver Cromwell rtmainQdy 
and still remains, in manuscript. 

And now the great Civil War convulsed 
^ xxxiii 



Introduction 



the country between 1861 and 1865, and ^ 
was distress and turmoil. Both the North- 
ern and the Southern armies swept over the 
formerly peaceful homes at Mount Saint 
Mary's to the battlefield at Gettysburg. 
As Maryland was a border Southern state, 
Miles and his family naturally sympathized 
with the Southland his brother-in-law and 
one of his brothers served in the South- 
ern army. He himself took no active 
part in the war, but he wrote and published 
several spirited songs, himself setting them 
to music.^ Of these the best are undoubt- 
edly God save the Souths and Where is the 
Freeman Founds which, though perhaps not 
equal to Whittier's effusions in the cause 
of the North, were effective at the moment 
and are still preserved. With these were 
also a ballad in negro dialect. Contraband 
Now^ and a graphic little idyl. Bill and /, 
which, as it anticipated Bret Harte by six 

^ The songs with music are published by Novello 
& Co. 

xxxiv 



Introduction 



years, is truly remarkable, being distinctly 
in the Bret Harte vein and rivalling his 
work. 

The war had little effect on Miles' liter- 
ary industry, for while it was in full career 
he produced a fifth tragedy in five acts 
entitled Afraja the Sorcerer^ founded on 
the novel Afraja by Henry Miigge, the 
scene being laid in Norway and Lapland, 
but it was never performed. This was 
followed in rapid succession by several 
dramas, original or adapted : The Parish 
Clerk^ Emily Chester, dramatized from a 
novel of that name ; Love and Honor, 
from the French of Emile Girardin ; The 
Old Curiosity Shop, from Dickens ; and a 
five-act tragedy, Thiodolf the Icelander, from 
La Motte Fouque's novel of the same 
name. None of these had much suc- 
cess, and will be, probably deservedly, for- 
gotten. Some of them were for John T. 
Ford, he and Miles continuing always 
close friends. 

XXXV 



Introduction 



In 1864 this drudgery, if it was drudg- 
ery to him, was suspended by another 
journey to Europe, this time to Florence. 
He went on business, to settle the estate 
of his uncle Henry Miles, who had 
appointed him his executor. Miles must 
have revelled in the beauties and asso- 
ciations of a place already so familiar to 
him through his studies and his previous 
visit. The little poem. La Velata^ inspired 
by one of the pictures in the Pitti Palace, 
is indicative no doubt of the way in which 
many another masterpiece in those glorious 
galleries must have affected him. Here, 
too, many of the most characteristic poems 
of his favorite poet Browning, whose home 
had been for many years within a stone's 
throw of the galleries, would appeal to 
him as they could never have appealed 
before. It is in the poems written after 
this visit to Florence that the influence of 
Browning on Miles' work becomes most 
apparent. Pity it is that they never met ; 
xxxvi 



Introduction 



but Browning, prostrated by the recent 
death of his wife, had just left Florence for 
England. 

On his return to America, Miles con- 
tributed to one of the magazines an article 
recording some of the impressions made 
upon him by his visits to Italy, under the 
title of " Glimpses of Tuscany," but he 
took no particular pains with it. And 
now his friends persuaded him to make a 
selection from the numerous poems, most 
of them short and occasional, which for 
many years he had been scattering pro- 
fusely, partly for his own amusement and 
partly to serve various purposes, through 
the columns of newspapers and periodi- 
cals. This at last he consented to do, 
making Christine^ the only ambitious effort 
in poetry which he had ever completed, 
the centrepiece of the volume. And so, in 
1866 appeared Christine^ A Troubadour s 
Song, and Other Poems. On the poems 
published in that volume and those con- 
xxxvii 



Introduction 



tained in this present one, whatever repu- 
tation Miles can claim as a lyric poet must 
rest. 

In the summer of 1866 he resigned his 
professorship at Mount Saint Mary's, but 
continued to live near the college in his 
home at Thornbrook until his death. 
What can never be sufficiently regretted is 
that he did not devote himself more to what 
occupied only a subordinate place in his 
workj — his Shakespearian critical studies, 
— instead of to what occupied the greater 
part of his time ; i, e, contributions to 
ephemeral drama. But those taskmasters, 
or sirens, the stage and journalism, which 
have been and will continue to be perilous 
snares for so many a man whose natural 
parts have qualified him for a higher sphere 
of activity, seldom suffer their thralls to 
escape them. Between 1868 and 1869 
Miles produced for John T. Ford a comic 
musical burlesque, Abou Hassan the Wag^ 
from the Arabian Nights^ together with 
xxxviii 



Introduction 



the music for the songs, The Maid of 
Mayence^ In four acts, which was very suc- 
cessful and had a long run at the great 
Boston Theatre, with Mrs. D. P. Bowers 
as heroine ; Behind the Scenes^ or The Girl 
of the Period^ a comedy ; and lastly, The 
Picture of Innocence^ a farce; and with this 
his long series of contributions to the 
stage was destined to close. 

While engaged on these works he had 
also been busy with a study of Hamlet, 
It was originally designed for a popular 
lecture to be delivered by Edwin Forrest, 
and afterwards published as a manual 
arranged to be used as a text-book for 
advanced classes in English Literature. 
As he himself says in writing to a friend 
distinguished as an educator to whom he 
sent a copy of Hamlet: "An experience 
of seven years* teaching has convinced me 
of the value of the masterpieces of the 
great dramatist as a means of education. 
It is my intention to follow this essay with 
xxxix 



Introduction 



others on Machethy Lear, Ot hello ^ and 
Henry IV T 

With Edwin Forrest the following cor- 
respondence appeared on the subject : 

Philadelphia, May lo, 1868. 
Geo. H. Miles, Esq., 

My dear Sir, — I duly received your favor 
of 6th inst. and beg you will not hurry yourself to 
furnish me the copy of Hamlet as I am quite 
willing to wait your own convenience in the 
matter. So don't be nervous, but " use all 
gently." Hamlet is the subject of most impor- 
tance, and much that is new, entirely new to the 
public, may be evolved in a philosophical con- 
sideration of this character, which, it has been 
truly said, scarcely any two minds can contem- 
plate from the same point of view. 

I regret to hear you have not been well, &c. 

Sincerely Yours, 1 

Edwin Forrest. 

By the autumn of the same year the £jj^j 
on Hamlet was finished and sent to Forrest. 
How it fared and what Forrest thought of 
it will be seen from the following : 
xl 



Introduction 



Philadelphia, Sept. 9, 1868. 
Geo. H. Miles, Esq., 

My dear Sir, — I have carefully read and 
duly considered your article on Hamlet, and have 
come to the conclusion that it is better fitted for 
a literary review than to serve my purpose as an 
oral lecture to the public. In a periodical like 
the North A)nerican Review^ in the new light 
with which you have illumined the subject, it 
would be read by both scholars and students 
of Shakespeare with an increased interest and 
intention. But it is my honest belief that it 
would most signally fail, upon the minds of a 
miscellaneous audience, to produce the desired 
effect of a popular lecture. 

Yours truly and sincerely, 

Edwin Forrest. 

The reasons for Forrest's decision can 
only be conjectured. Perhaps there was 
too much of it, for otherwise a lecture 
better adapted for a popular audience 
could scarcely be imagined. Full of en- 
thusiasm and fire, lucid and picturesque, 
trenchant and eloquent in expression, it 
could scarcely fail to move and carry 
xli 



Introduction 



away such an assembly as it was designed 
to appeal to. If it failed in its effect, it 
would fail just where Forrest thought or 
represented that it would be most likely 
to succeed, ^ — -in the study with the cool 
critic. The probabihty is that Forrest 
totally dissented, as he may well have 
done, from Miles' view of Hamlet's char- 
acter, and that, knowing the play as such 
an artist would be likely to know it, he 
knew that some at least of Miles' con- 
tentions were untenable. 

The Essay on Hamlet^ with all its ex- 
travagance and delusions, is a remarkable 
contribution to Shakespearian criticism. 
None but a man of genius could have 
produced it, a man who, had he forti- 
fied and disciplined natural gifts with what 
study and reflection could supply, would 
have developed into a really great critic. 
It is not necessary here either to analyze 
the essay or to dwell on what is palpably 
untenable in its theories, such as its con-> 
xlii 



Introduction 



tention that Hamlet's arrest at sea was the 
result of an arrangement which he had 
himself made with the pirates, or that far 
from being the incarnation of weakness 
and irresolution he was the incarnation 
of deliberation and strength, or that the 
killing of the king was not the result 
of sudden impulse, but the calculated cli- 
max of long laid and carefully elaborated 
schemes concealed even from Horatio. 
But nothing could be more admirable than 
his remarks on the characters of Ophelia 
and the Queen, on the wisdom of Hamlet's 
irresolution, both precedent and subse- 
quent to the play-scene, on the reasonable- 
ness of his distrust of Ophelia. How 
excellent is the following ! He is com- 
menting on the way in which Hamlet 
persists in deferring the blow. 

Who has not recognized in some degree the 

charm of the suspended claw, or comprehended 

the stern joy of the Hon in his lair? The 

crimes of this sceptred fratricide are stale ; the 

xliii 



Introduction 



murdered man is dust ; his widow old in incest ; 
there is no fresh living horror to clamor for 
instant retribution. Indeed there is no adequate 
retribution possible except such as the soul of 
the avenger can find in saturating itself with the 
spectacle of its victim. The naked fact of 
killing the king would be poor revenge save as 
the climax of antecedent torture, — not phys- 
ical, but mental and spiritual torture. For when 
mind and heart are outraged they seek to be 
avenged in kind. To haunt that guilty court 
like a spectre; to hang destruction by a hair 
above the throne ; to wean his mother from her 
low cleaving; to vex the state with turbulent 
and dangerous lunacy ; to make that sleek 
usurper quail and cower in every conflict; to 
lash him with unsparing scorn ; to foil him at 
every turn ; to sting him to a new crime ; to 
drag him from his throne a self-convicted felon, 
and, ultimately with one crowning sword-thrust 
to make all even, — this is the nearest approach 
to atonement of which the case is susceptible. 

In his excellent remarks on the mis- 
take of the division which now ends the 
Third Act and dismisses the characters 
xliv 



Introduction 



after (Exeunt severally ; Hamlet dragging in 
Polonius), instead of with the scene closing 
after the passing of Fortinbras' army in 
the present Fourth Act, Scene IV, we have 
a convincing plea for a re-arrangement of 
that portion of the drama. And well 
worthy of consideration are his reasons : 

Ending here, the interval consumed by the 
voyage to England, the return of Laertes from 
Paris, and the expedition of Fortinbras to Poland 
and back, is thrown between the acts, — its 
natural place. Greek tragedy, restricted by its 
organic law to the culmination of events, was 
necessarily an unbroken march from its prologue 
to its catastrophe. Modern tragedy, aiming rather 
at the development of character through a series 
of events, has wisely divided these events into 
groups separated from each other by the inter- 
position of a curtain. By this brief but total 
eclipse of the fictitious world, the mind is pre- 
pared for intervals of time or space. A year 
elapsed or an ocean crossed during the fall of 
that mysterious screen does less violence to the 
imagination than the supposition of a month 
between consecutive scenes, 
xlv 



Introduction 



Again, his vindication of the famous 
" cuts " in the Folio, though pressed into 
the service of his very questionable theory 
as to certain sides of Hamlet's character, 
and his contention that they probably 
came from Shakespeare himself, show 
great acumen. But what strikes us most 
in the essay is not only the intensity of 
the critic's sympathetic appreciation of the 
poet's work, but its penetrative insight 
into its essence. To the uninitiated the 
following passage may sound like verbiage, 
but the initiated will feel its force and 
know its truth, — at least as symbol : 

Seeing Nature with Shakespeare's eye is like 
reading the Heavens with a glass of infinite 
range and power; wonder on wonder rolls into 
view ; systems, dependencies, mysteries, rela- 
tions, never before divined ; tokens of other 
atmospheres, gleams of erratic luminaries that 
seem to spurn all law yet move obedient to 
one complex impulse; glimpses of courier light 
cleaving the vast immensity on its way to our 
yet unvisited world ; and all the while, the soul 
xlvi 



Introduction 



uplifted by the vision is flooded with the very 
music of the spheres. 

That a man with the powers and quali- 
fications indicated in this essay should, 
in consequence partly of his surroundings 
and partly of circumstances, have never 
been enabled to develop them as they 
deserved, is indeed to be regretted. But 
this is not all that has to be mourned. 
The Essay on Hamlet, which appeared 
in book form in 1870, was to have been 
followed by similar essays on four other 
tragedies of Shakespeare, but while he 
was busily engaged with the essay on 
Macbeth, he was attacked suddenly with a 
fatal malady, — Bright's disease, — and six 
months later he succumbed, passing quietly 
away in the early morning of July 23, 
1 87 1, just eight days before completing 
his forty-seventh year. 

Miles was a man greatly beloved and 
respected by all who knew him, of hand- 
some presence and singularly engaging 
xlvii 



Introduction 



manners. " He was," says one who knew 
him well, " a loving, kindly soul, always 
joyous, genial, and inspiring, never dull or 
gloomy. His heart went out to all, espe- 
cially to children ; it was a grief to him 
that he had none of his own. He was a 
good son, brother, husband, friend, and a 
most winning, agreeable companion." In 
society, both at Baltimore and New York, 
he was a great favorite, as many still re- 
member. Socially and professionally he 
was brought into contact and was more 
or less intimate with many interesting and 
notable people, was one of the committee 
to receive Thackeray and other literary 
visitors to Baltimore. Unfortunately no 
records of this phase of his life remain, 
as shortly before his death he destroyed 
nearly all his correspondence. Could he 
have lived a little longer, he would have 
met Sidney Lanier, who first came to Bal- 
timore the very year that Miles died. 
The poems published in 1866, together 
xlviii 



Introduction 



with others recently collected for this 
edition, represent Miles' best work in 
verse. They are of very unequal merit; 
the best are undoubtedly the Lyrics. 
Christine^ the most ambitious of them, 
is a romantic story of love and beauty 
and chivalry resembling in character 
Byron's Bride of Abydos and Scott's Lay 
of the last MinstreL Based on an old 
Provencal legend, with a mediaeval touch 
of miracle and a faint expression of reli- 
gious symbolism of the time of the first 
crusade, it is supposed to be recited by 
a wandering troubadour before Richard 
Coeur de Lion and his queen and court in 
their camp at Acre, in Palestine, just as 
Philip Augustus has deserted the crusad- 
ers and is sailing home to France. The 
poem will be read with pleasure by those 
who are attracted by a species of poetry 
which has always been an exotic in our 
literature, and who find in picturesque 
descriptions of nature, in successions of 
d xlix 



Introduction 



vividly embodied pageants, and in excel- 
lent and most skilfully modulated rhythm, 
compensation for falsetto and unreality. 
It is always perilous and often fatal for a 
poet to attempt excursions like these. In 
poetry impossibilities are only tolerable 
as the expression of symbolism or when 
in their presentation the workmanship 
exceeds the material. But in every part 
it calls aloud for recension and the file. 
These two stanzas are excellent : 

They have left the lands where the tall hemp 
springs, 
Where the clover bends to the bee 5 
They have left the hills where the red vine 

flings 
Her clustered curls of a thousand rings 
Round the arms of the mulberry tree. 

They have left the lands where the walnut lines 

The roads, and the chestnuts blow ; 
Beneath them the thread of the cataract shines. 
Around them the plumes of the warrior pines, 
Above them the rock and the snow. 
1 



Introduction 



And again, the Bridesmaids' Greeting has a 
fine touch, beginning thus : 

Sister, standing at Love's golden gate. 
Life's second door — 
Fleet the maiden-time is flying, 
Friendship fast in love is dying. 
Bridal fate doth separate 
Friends evermore. 

As O. W. Holmes remarked of them, 
many of the poems which have yet intrin- 
sically much merit recall too nearly the 
echo of the works of other poets. Thus 
Raphael Sanzio and San Sisto are echoes 
showing the influence of Browning's 
Andrea del Sarto and other poems ; Miles 
himself would not have denied this. But 
they are echoes above the reach of a mere 
imitator. One marks with an asterisk : 

. . . when 
Our dreams at once are deeds — when upward 

goes 
The curtain from the clouded soul, and art 
Flames all her unveiled Paradise before us, 
li 



Introduction 



which is at least vigorous. Nor would 
the master himself have disdained what is 
embodied in the dying Raphael's 

She '11 find her way to Heaven, if I am there 
Before her. 

And in the San Sisto the poet points 
out what the art critics fail to see, or say, 
namely : that as is clearly indicated by the 
footstool angels, the figures in the picture 
are standing before the Eternal Throne. 

Browning's Pretty Woman is faintly 
recalled in A Card from the Violets^ and 
again in Lazarus and The Kings Speech, 
both of which, just in his manner, wreathe 
figurative perplexity round simple concep- 
tions. Yet they are distinctly not imita- 
tions. The best of the longer poems is 
Beatrice y as O. W. Holmes noticed when 
he saw it in its original form. It owes 
much to Keats, something perhaps to the 
Brownings and to Tennyson's vein in 
Love and Beauty, but the poem as a whole 
Hi 



Introduction 



is a really beautiful one, with a beauty not 
imitative. From none but a poet's finely 
touched spirit could have come such 
verses as the following: 

Sleep on, 
My lost one, — each will walk the world 

alone, 
Since Heaven so wills it ; with thy daily cares 
Thou wilt deal calmly, and thy guardian 

prayers 
Shall follow me, .... 
For O, it seems as if the stream that ran 
Beside my soul were dry, and all things have 
A withered look ; the sunbeam on the wave 
No longer dances, — the cold clouds refuse 
Their sunset glow, — the unsought roses lose 
Their perfumed blushes, — dimly wandereth 
The moon amid the tree-tops, pale as death. 
Weary and chill, — and I can scarce rejoice 
In music's benediction, and the voice 
Of friendship sounds like solemn mockery. 

. Yet fear not 
The future; I shall bravely front my lot 
With the one rapture manhood ne'er foregoes, 
The stately joy of mastering its woes, 
liii 



Introduction 



Inkermann^ though very spirited, has 
little to distinguish it from other imita- 
tions of Macaulay and Aytoun. Of the 
love lyrics The Last Snow-Wreath is very 
charming, and She will return is a pleasing 
variant of Browning's A Woman s Last 
Word, as also is Under the Tree, Love. By 
far the best of the lyrics is Said the Rose, 
which, but for a trifling flaw or two in the 
workmanship, such as the jarring Poe 
echo, " rare and radiant metal," and a few 
strained rhymes like " From my leaves 
no odors started^' would be a gem. The 
touch. 

And I shone about her slumbers 
Like a light, 

is exquisite. It may with truth be said of 
this little poem, that no Anthology of 
American poetry would be complete with- 
out it. Of the sentimental songs, many 
of which are pretty trifles without distinc- 
tion, the best is Gabriel's Song. But among 
liv 



Introduction 



these songs is a little idyl which, espe- 
cially as it anticipated Bret Harte by six 
years, is truly remarkable. It is Bill and L 
The conclusion is a little cumbrous and 
obscure, illustrating a defect only too char- 
acteristic of Miles, — his intolerance of 
the labor of the file. 

One of his most pleasing poems is 
certainly that written at Chillon on his 
attaining his fortieth year. There is here 
a combination of grace and dignity in ex- 
pression not usual with him, as well as 
touches of true pathos. 

Let me end by repeating what I said 
when I began. It would be absurd to 
claim for Miles a high place, judging him 
by his actual achievement, even among the 
minor poets of his country, so scanty were 
the productions in which he did justice to 
his powers. But to an enduring place 
among them he is entitled, and it is a dis- 
tinctive one. This is the justification of the 
present collection, — at once a tribute of 
Iv 



Introduction 



respect and affection to a beloved memory, 
and it is to be hoped a not unacceptable 
gift to the lovers of poetry. Such a career 
as is here sketched is, both from its associ- 
ation with American dramatic history and 
popular literature, as well as in its record 
of manifold literary activity, of no ordi- 
nary interest, while the very least that can 
be said for such poems as Said the Rose, 
Beatrice, GabrieFs Song, Bill and /, and The 
last Snow-JVreath, is that they must always 
please; and what always pleases ought not 
to be forgotten. 

J. Churton Collins. 



\v\ 



SAID THE ROSE AND 
OTHER LYRICS 



SAID THE ROSE AND 
OTHER LYRICS 

SAID THE ROSE 

I AM weary of the Garden, 
Said the Rose; 
For the winter winds are sighing, 
All my playmates round me dying, 
And my leaves will soon be lying 
'Neath the snows. 

But I hear my Mistress coming, 

Said the Rose; 
She will take me to her chamber 
Where the honeysuckles clamber 
And I '11 bloom there all December 

'Spite the snows. 

Sweeter fell her lily finger 

Than the Bee ! 
Ah, how feebly I resisted. 
Smoothed my thorns, and e'en assisted 
As all blushing I was twisted 

Off my tree. 
3 



Said the Rose 



And she fixed me in her bosom 

Like a star ; 
And I flashed there all the morning, 
Jasmin, honeysuckle scorning. 
Parasites forever fawning 

That they are. 

And when evening came she set me 

In a vase 
All of rare and radiant metal, 
And I felt her red lips settle 
On my leaves till each proud petal 

Touched her face. 

And I shone about her slumbers 

Like a light ; 
And, I said, " Instead of weeping. 
In the garden vigil keeping. 
Here I'll watch my Mistress sleeping 

Every night." 

But when morning with its sunbeams 

Softly shone. 
In the mirror where she braided 
Her brown hair I saw how jaded. 
Old and colorless and faded 

I had grown. 
4 



Said the Rose 



Not a drop of dew was on me, 

Never one ; 
From my leaves no odors started, 
All my perfume had departed, 
I lay pale and broken-hearted 

In the sun. 

Still, I said, her smile is better 

Than the rain ; 
Though my fragrance may forsake me. 
To her bosom she will take me. 
And with crimson kisses make me 

Young again. 

So she took me . . . gazed a second . . 

Half a sigh . . . 
Then, alas, can hearts so harden ? 
Without ever asking pardon, 
Threw me back into the garden 

There to die. 

How the jealous garden gloried 

In my fall ! 
How the honeysuckles chid me, 
How the sneering jasmins bid me 
Light the long, gray grass that hid me 

Like a pall. 
5 



Said the Rose 



There I lay beneath her window 

In a swoon, 
Till the earthworm o'er me trailing 
Woke me just at twilight's failing, 
As the whip-poor-will was wailing 

To the moon. 

But I hear the storm-winds stirring 

In their lair; 
And I know they soon will lift me 
In their giant arms and sift me 
Into ashes as they drift me 

Through the air. 

So I pray them in their mercy 

Just to take 
From my heart of hearts or near it 
The last living leaf, and bear it 
To her feet, and bid her wear it 

For my sake. 



Raphael Sanzio 



RAPHAEL SANZIO 

KEEP to the lines — strain not a hair 
beyond : 
Nature must hold her laws e'en 
against Hell. 
There you o'ershoot the mark an inch — you 

paint 
A lie a minute. Giulio, keep the lines — 
The lines — my lines ! They tell the very 

worst 
The devil can do with flesh — let Angelo 
Do more. I want no second Spasimo, 
No miracles of muscle : on the Mount 
Is miracle enough — the radiant change 
Of man to Diety : no need to make 
The boy a fiend outright — for see you not, 
Though God's own likeness lives there in His 

Son, 
Ours is not lost. So keep the lines, nor hope 
To mend their meaning. Wrong again ? Hence- 
forth 

7 



Raphael Sanzto 



Reserve your brush to gild the booth, or deck 
Street corners. Friends, forsooth — you Raphael's 

friend — 
And yet you will not keep my lines — the last 
This hand shall ever trace ? — By Bacchus, 

sir, 
It had made the hot blood of old Pietro boil 
Had I e'er crazed his purpose so. Have done 
With this : your lampblack darkens all the air. 
Must you o'erride me with that wild, coarse 

soul 
Of yours ? My hand is still upon the rein : 
There 's time enough to run your fiery race 
When I am gone ? Why, what a burst of 

tears ? 
I am not dying : wherefore do you stare, 
With such a frightened love, into my face ? 
Your hand all palsied ? Ah, I see it now — 
You feel too much for me to feel for art. 
Forgive my first unkindness : by and by. 
When 1 am out of sight, and manly grief 
Has done with tear and tremor — then, some 

day. 
When your good hand is steady and you feel 
The stirring of the true God — to your brush, 
And keep my lines ! 

8 



Raphael Sanzio 



This is my birthday, Giulio ; 
The last one here — the first, perhaps, in Heaven, 
With our dear angels. 'T was a grain too 

much. 
That brief about restoring ancient Rome : 
His Holiness and I, we both forgot 
Raphael was human. Princely favor, sometimes, 
Falls over-heavy like the Sabine bracelet. 
For those damp vaults — their chill struck to my 

heart 
Like the sharp finger of a skeleton. 
While all the caverned ruin whispered out 
" Behold the end ! " Too soon, I thought, — 

but God 
Thinks best. I do not wish to die — should like 
To last a little longer, just to see 
That picture finished and to have our work 
Judged in the peopled halls, swung side by side, 
Michael's and mine ! But do not turn your 

head — 
Sit closer. Giulio, men have said I slumbered 
Over those later frescos and the walls 
Of Agostino — they are right, I did. 
But slumbering there in whitest arms, I learned, 
'Mid all those Nymphs and Graces, this one 

truth — 

9 



Raphael Sanzio 



The inspiration of the nude is over : 

The Christian Muse is draped. Tell Michael 

so 
When next you find him busy with his " Torso." 
How then that bare Demoniac, do you ask ? 
Was 't not an artist's thought — the double 
chano-e 

o 

Of man to God above, to fiend below r 
And then the instant the redeeming foot 
Forsakes the earth, to loose the naked devil 
Flaunting the scared Apostles ? Who shall say 
Art called not for my boy ? Yet thrice as 

loud 
As art, called Raphael ! For myself alone 
I drew him, every quivering muscle mapped 
By the infernal strain, that I might hush 
Those sneers of Angelo's — for I had plucked 
His surgeon secrets from the grave and meant 
To mate him where he's matchless. I have 

waited 
The coming of that moment when we feel 
The hand is surest, the brain clearest — when 
Our dreams at once are deeds — when upward 

goes 
The curtain from the clouded soul, and art 
Flames all her unveiled Paradise upon us. 
lo 



Raphael Sanzio 



Patiently, trustingly, that well-known hour 

I 've waited — and at last it comes — too 

late ! 
For now, you see, 't is hard to reach my hand 
To your sleek curls, and my poor head seems 

chained 
To this hot pillow. Had I now a tithe 
Of half the strength I fooled on Chigi's walls, 
I'd make the demon in that youth discourse 
Anatomy enough to cram the schools 
Till doomsday. Heaven, how plainly there 
Your work stands ofF from mine ! Quick with 

your arm — 
I feel the ancient power — give me the colors — 
I and my picture, let us once more meet ! 
God, let me finish it ! Can you not stir 
My bed with those stout shoulders ? Then lift 

me — 
Child's play you '11 find it — my weak woman's 

frame 
Never weighed much — a breath can float it 

now. 
Do as I bid you boy, I am not mad : 
'T is not delirium, but returning life. 
O for the blood that barber's lancet stole ! — 

So — nearer — nearer 

II 



Kapha el Sanzio 



1 was dreaming, Giulio, 

That I had finished it, and that it hung 

Beside their Lazarus ; I and Angelo 

Together stood — a little farther ofF, 

That pack-horse colorist of his from Venice. 

There stood we in the light of yonder face, 

I and my rival, till, asudden, shone 

A look of love in the small hazel eyes. 

And down the double pointed beard a tear 

Ran sparkling; and he bowed his head to me — 

The grand, gray, haughty head — and cried 

aloud. 
Thrice cried aloud " Hail Master ! " — Why^ 

't is strange — 
How came I here — these colors on my 

lingers — 
This brush? Stop — let me think — I am not 

quite 
Awake. Ah, I remember. Swooned, you say ? 
How long have I been lying thus ? An hour 
Dead on your breast ? Wheel back the bed — 

put by 
These playthings ! I can do no more for man ! 
And God, who did so much for me — 't is time 
Something were done for Him. A coach ? 

Perhaps 

12 



Raphael Sa?tzio 



The black mules of the Cardinal ? No ? Well, 
Good Friday is the prayer-day of the year — 
That keeps him. Who ? — What ! Leo's 

self has sent 
To ask of Raphael ? Kindly done ; and yet 
The iron Pontiff, whom I painted thrice. 
Had co?ne. No matter, these are gracious 

words, — 
" Rome were not Rome without meT My best 

thanks 
Back to his Holiness; and dare I add 
A message, 't were that Rome can never be 
Without me. I shall live as long as Rome ! 
Bramante's temple there, bequeathed to me 
To hide her cross-crowned bosom in the 

clouds — 
San Pietro — travertine and marble massed 
To more than mountain majesty — shall scarce 
Outlast that bit of canvas. Let the light in. 
There 's the Ritonda waiting patiently 
My coming. Angelo has built his chapel 
In Santa Croce, that his eyes may ope 
On Ser Filippo's Duomo. I would see — 
What think you ? — neither dome nor Giotto's 

shaft. 
Nor yon stern Pantheon's solemn, sullen grace, 

13 



Raphael Sanzio 



But Her whose colors I have worn since first 
I dreamed of beauty in the chestnut shades 
Of Umbria — Her for whom my best of Ufe 
Has been one labor — Her, the Nazareth Maid, 
Who gave to Heaven a Queen, to man a God, 
To God a Mother. I have hope of it ! — 
And I would see her — not as when she props 
The babe slow-tottering to the Cross amid 
The flowering field, — nor yet when, Sybil-eyed, 
Backward she sweeps her Son from Tobit's 

Fish, — 
Nor e'en as when, above the footstool angels. 
She stands with trembling mouth, dilated eyes. 
Abashed before the uncurtained Father's 

throne, — 
But see her wearing the rapt smile of love 
Half human, half divine, as fast she strains 
Her infant in the chair. 

There is a step 

Upon the staircase. Has she come again ? 
She must not enter. Take her these big pearls 
Meant for the poor dead bride I strove to love. 
Tell her to wear them, when the full moon 

fires 
The Flavian arches, and she wanders forth 



Raphael Sanzio 



To the green spot — she will remember it — 
A little farther on. No more of this. 
Say but the word, too long delayed, — Farewell. 
We said it oft before, meaning it too — 
But life and love were with us — so we met. 
This time — we part in earnest. Not a word ? — 
She bent her head and vanished, leaving me 
These flowers ? No tears — not one? So like 

her ! Set 
The buds in water — leave me one — this 

one — 
We '11 fade together. Giulio, in my will 
Her name stands next to yours : I would not 

have 
Those dark eyes look on want, that looked on 

me 
So long, so truly. Do not shake your head : 
She '11 find her way to Heaven, if I am there 
Before her. Jealous ? — Brother, I will die 
Upon your bosom — you shall close these eyes. 
Eyes that have lived above this city's towers. 
Up where the eagle's wing hath never swept : 
Eyes that have scanned the far side of the sun 
And upward still, high over Hesperus, 
Have climbed the mount where trembling angels 

bow, 

15 



Raphael Sanzio 



And stolen the shining forms of beauty niched 
Fast by the Eternal throne. I pray you hold 
Those roses something nearer. 

Shall we send 
Francesco for the Cardinal ? You see 
The shadow of the pines slopes eastward now — 
Santa Maria 's empty : — he may come 
Too late — there's a strange hush about my 

heart 
Already. Still, a word before the last 
Long silence comes. I do not think to leave 
An enemy behind me : Angelo 
Has sometimes wronged me, but I cannot hate — 
I have that weakness — so I pitied him. 
Giulio, the artist is not he who dreams. 
But he who does ; — and when I saw this man 
Hewing his way into the marble's heart 
For the sweet secret that he dreamed was there. 
Till the fast fettered beauty perished, killed 
By the false chisel and imperious hand 
That held no Heaven-commissioned key to ope 
The prison gates — I pitied him, I say ; 
And once I wept, as by me once he stalked 
Beneath the stars, in either eye a tear. 
Groaning beneath his load of voiceless beauty. 
i6 



Raphael Sanzto 



I knew his mighty sorrow — I had felt it, — 
And who that soars has not ? No wing that 

fans 
The sun, but sometimes burns ! O grandest 

Greek, 
Not thine alone to ravish fire from Heaven, 
Nor thine alone the rock : in every age. 
The vulture's beak is in the artist's soul ! 
In this, we are brothers. Give him my last 

greeting, 
When next you meet. 

The Cardinal, at last. 
Before he enters, Giulio, lay this flower 
Among the others. — You may leave us now. 



17 



Marcela 



MARCELA 

(Daughter of Lope de Vega, the Spanish Poet) 

WAS it wrong, dear Lady Abbess, 
That I spent the night in prayer, 
That the Rosary you gave me 
Numbered every bead a tear ? 
I but wept until the watchman 
Pausing in the street below 
Slowly chimed the midnight ave : 
Then I gave to God my woe. 

Thrice I sued the Saints for slumber. 

Still I could not keep away 
From the narrow window facing 

The lit Chapel where he lay — 
Where the funeral torches flickered 

Through the ever-opening door, 
As around their silent Poet, 

Pressed the throng of rich and poor. 
i8 



Marcela 



Yes, I meant to sleep, dear Mother, 

But morning came so soon 
As I watched that lighted Chapel 

Shining back upon the moon : 
Once, methought, I lay beside him, 

'Neath the sable and the gold, 
Bending o'er my minstrel father 

As I used in days of old : 

And a light — the same that trembled 

O'er his lips and o'er his brow 
When he sang our San Isidro 

With the angels at the plow — 
And a smile — the same that shone there 

When he bade the Mother mild 
Hush the wings that shook the palm-trees 

Rustling o'er her sleeping child. . . . ! 

Oh, 't is hard that all may follow 

The mute Minstrel to his rest 
Save the nearest and the dearest, 

Save the daughter he loved best ! 
I alone, his own Marcela, 

Cannot touch dead Lope's bier. 
Cannot kiss the lips whose music 

None but angels now may hear ! 
19 



Marcela 



Still I feel, dear Lady Abbess, 

You will grant me what you may ; 
Since your smile first hailed me Novice 

It is fourteen years to-day : 
Have I shrunk from fast or vigil. 

Have I failed at matin bell. 
Have I clung to earthen image 

Since I bade the world farewell ? 

Nine long days I Ve heard the tolling 

Of the bells he loved to hear ; 
Nine long days I 've heard the wailing 

Of Madrid around his bier ; 
And, to-day, he will be buried. 

For I catch the deepening hum 
Of the people, and the stepping 

Of the soldiers as they come. 

Never once I begged you lead me 

To the consecrated place, 
Where, between the triple tapers, 

I might gaze into his face — 
Grant me, then, sweet Lady Abbess, 

Only this — but this, alas ! 
'Neath Marcela's cloister window 

Let her father's funeral pass. 
20 



Marcela 



Not one look, not one, I promise, 

For the Princes in their might, 
For the war-horse proudly curving 

To the spur of sworded knight : 
Though all Spain in tears surround him, 

I shall know her Minstrel dead. 
And my eyes — they will not wander 

Far from Lope's silver head. 

Look, the Chapel doors are parting, 

See the lifted torches shine. 
And the horsemen and the footmen 

All the swarming pathways line. 
Can it be . . . these poor tears blind me . . 

Ah, you knew what I would pray. 
And have granted ere I asked it — 

Yes, they come — they come this way ! 



21 



She Will He turn 



SHE WILL RETURN 



L 



AUGH thy bold laugh again : 
Men must not mourn, 
No ! though they love in vain 
She w^ill return. 



Moping and mute — for shame ! 

Women all spurn 
Lovers so true and tame — 

She will return. 

Thou with that stalwart form, 

Bent like the fern ? 
Oak should defy the storm — 

She will return. 

Snap the bright silver thrall : 

Hast thou to learn 
No woman's worth it all ? — 

She will return. 

22 



She Will Return 



Why, were it Helen dead, 

Sealed in an urn. 
Should half these tears be shed ? 

She will return. 

Pshaw, put this folly by : 

Canst not discern 
Scorn in thy neighbor's eye ? — 

She will return. 

Maidens are merriest while 

Lovers most yearn. 
Not even force a smile ! — 

She will return. 

Fie, what a fool art thou : 
When the leaves burn 

Round the ripe autumn's brow 
She will return. 



23 



Under the Tree. Love 



UNDER THE TREE, LOVE 

UNDER the tree, love, 
Under the tree, 
Were we not merry, 
Sunset and we ? 
Dark in the valley 

Lay the dim town, 
We had just stolen 
Forth from its frown. 

Under the tree, love, 

Under the tree. 
Swearing sweet friendships, 

April and we : 
South winds to fan us. 

Song-birds to greet, 
Blossoms above us, 

Buds at our feet. 

Under the tree, love, 

Under the tree, 
On our green carpet, 

Nature and we ; 
24 



Under the Tree, Love 



Bright o'er the river 
Floats a far sail — 

Why turns thy lover 
Asudden so pale ? . . . 

Under the tree, love, 

Under the tree. 
Why is he gazing 

Toward the green sea ? 
Chirps the cicala 

'Mid the mute cells — 
Is it old Giotto 

Ringing his bells ? 

Under the tree, love. 

Under the tree. 
Why am I trembling. 

Answer for me ? 
Doth the sea beckon ? . . 

Love at the oar. 
Fate at the rudder. 

Fatal the shore ! 

Under the tree, love. 

Under the tree. 
Grandly above us 

Spreads a blue sea : 
25 



Under the Tree, Love 



Two silver beacons 

Sphered in the skies, 
Eve in her cradle, 

Opening her eyes. 

Under the tree, love, 

Under the tree. 
All the stars watching 

You, love, and me : 
Stars that would follow us 

Over the wave. 
Eyes that would haunt us 

Down to the grave. 

Under the tree, love. 

Under the tree, 
" Choose ! we must choose now 

Choose either sea ! " 
" Turn from the white sail 

Fluttering by. 
Watch those twin beacons 

Sphered in the sky ! " 



26 



San Sisto 



SAN SISTO^ 

THREE hundred years the world has 
looked at it 
Unwearied, — it at Heaven j and here 

it hangs 
In Dresden, making this a Holy City. 
It is an old acquaintance : you have met 
Copies by thousands, — Morghens here and 

there, — 
But all the sunlight withered. Prints, at best. 
Are but the master's shadow — as you see. 
I call that face the holiest revelation 
God ever made to genius. How, or why, 
When, or for whom 't was painted, wherefore 

ask ? 
Enough to know 't is Raphael's, and to feel 
His Fornarina was not with him when. 
Spurning the slow cartoon, he flashed that face. 
That Virgin Mother's half transfigured face, 

1 The Madonna of St. Sixtus, — painted originally for 
the Altar of St. Sixtus' Church in Piacenza. 

27 



San Sisto 



On canvas. Yes, they say 't was meant to 

head 
Some virginal procession ; — to that banner 
Heaven's inmost gates might open, one w^ould 

think. 
But let the picture tell its story — take 
Your stand in this far corner. . Falls the light 
As you would have it ? That Saint Barbara, — 
Observe her inclination and the finger 
Of Sixtus ; — both are pointing — where P — 

Now look 
Below, — those grand boy-angels ; — watch 

their eyes 
Fastened — on whom F — What, not yet catch 

my meaning ? . . . 
Step closer, — half a step — no nearer. Mark 
The Babe's fixed glance of calm equality. 
Observe that wondering, rapt, dilated gaze. 
The Mother's superhuman joy and fear. 
That hushed — that startled adoration ! Watch 
Those circled cherubs swarming into light. 
Wreathing their splendid arch, their golden ring. 
Around the unveiled vision. Look above 
At the drawn curtain ! — Ah, we do not see 
God's self, but they do ; — they are face to face 

With the Eternal Father ! 

28 



San Sisto 



Sir, 't is strange ; 
That wondrous Virgin face, which Raphael 

plucked 
From his vast soul four centuries ago, 
Is breathing now, — not in his Italy — 
But on the shores where then first flashed the 

sail 
Of Genoa's ocean Pilot. Years ago. 
We met mid-heav'n like drops of summer rain, 
Then, falling, parted ! — But — observe the 

picture : 
Am I not right?— -There —just before them 

burns, 
Viewless to us, the unveiled Omnipotent. 
Yet, somehow, critics fail to see, or say this. 



29 



The Bird's Song 



THE BIRD'S SONG 

TO sing was my only duty, 
So I sang for you all the day ; 
But there fell a silence with the night, 
And my voice it has passed away : 
A silence fell with the falling night 

And with it an icy pain, 
So I folded my head beneath my wing, 
Never to sing again. 

And when morning broke without my song 

You flew to your minstrel dead. 
And smoothed the wings that were folded fast 

While a tear or two you shed ; 
I knew you would miss me, mistress mine. 

When my little house would be still ; 
Miss the fitful gleam of my yellow breast 

Through the wires, — and the greeting bill ! 

Put your mouth to mine, — did I sit and sing 
On my perch all the seasons through. 

In that painted cage, — with a useless wing 
And a ceaseless song for you ? — 

30 



The Bird's Song 



But, there were times when I saw my mates 
Sweep by with the glittering spring, 

Trilling their loves in the blossoming groves. 
And then — it was sorrow to sino-. 

But now that I never shall sing again. 

Lay me beneath a tree. 
Where the minstrels that never knew the cage 

May gather and sing for me : 
I cannot leave you my voice. Lady, 

But my plumage tenderly touch, — 
These feathers of gold are little. Lady, — 

But who else can leave you as much ? 



31 



Inkermann 



INKERMANN 



IN marble Sebastopol 
The bells to chapel call : 
Our outposts hear the chanting 
Of monks within the wall. 
Why meet they there with psalm and prayer? 

'T is some high festival. 
By the old Achaian ruin 

Why groan those heavy wheels ? 
Some forage-freighted convoy 

Toward the leaguered city steals. 
Sleep ! — will the serfs twice routed 

Dare the freeman's steel again, 
Will the men we stormed from Alma 
Beard the lion in his den ? 

II 

'T is a drizzling Sabbath day-break, 
Cheerless rings the reveille, 

32 



Inkermann 



Through the shroudlike mists around us 

Not a stone's-throw can we see : 
Feebly up the clouded welkin 

Toils the morning bleak and gray, 
Dim as twilight in October 

Dawns that dark and dismal day. 
The camp once more is sounding, 

Slowly putting on its strength, 
As a boa, starved from torpor, 

Half uncoils its lazy length. 
Some are drying their damp muskets, 

Others gloss the rusted steel, 
Some are crouching o'er the watch-fires 

At the hurried matin meal ; 
Some are bending o'er their Bibles, 

Others bid the beads of Rome, 
Many, still unwaken'd, hearken 

To the Sabbath bells of home. 
The mountain and the valley 

With the hoary haze are white. 
Sea and river, friend and foeman. 

Town and trench are hid from sight : 
And the camp itself so softly 

With the snowy mist is blent 
Scarce the waving of the canvas 

Shows the outline of the tent. 
3 33 



Inkermann 



III 



Hark, the rifle's hawklike whistle ! 

But we stir not for the din, 
Till with sullen step the pickets 

From the hills are driven in, — 
Till the river seemed to thunder 

Through its rocky pass below, 
And a voice ran through the army, 

"Up to arms ! — it is the foe ! " 
Up with the Red Cross banner, 

Out with the victor steel, 
" Up to battle," the drums rattle, 

" Form and front," the bugles peal. 
From the tents and from the trenches, 

From the ramparts, from the mine, 
We are groping for the bayonet, 

We are straggling into line ; 
Half attired and half accoutred 

Spur the officers headlong. 
And the men, from slumber starting. 

Round their colors fiercely throng. 
Then the lit artillery's earthquake 

Shook the hills beyond the gorge — 
Mute then were a thousand hammers 

Smiting hard the sounding forge. 
34 



Inkermann 



Full upon us comes the ruin, — 

They have ranged the very spot, — 

Purple glares the sod already, 
As the storm falls fast and hot. 

At our feet the earth foams spraylike 
'Neath the tempest of their shot. 

IV 

Crouched like caged and fretted lion 

For the unseen foe we glare, — 
Not a bayonet, not a sabre 

Through the rolling mists appear. 
Yet full sure the foe is on us. 

For along the river's bed 
Tolls the low and measured thunder 

Of a mighty army's tread. 
The hearts beneath our bosoms 

Swell high as they would burst : 
We know not what is coming. 

But we nerve us for the worst : 
Fast our shoulders grow together. 

Firm beneath that iron hail, 
The thin red line is forming 

That was never known to quail. 
Up from the slopes beneath us 

Nearer thrills the muffled hum, 
35 



Inkermann 



They are stepping to the onset 
Without trumpet, without drum. 

And we clutch our pieces tighter, — 
Let them come ! 



The fog before us deepens.; 

Like a dark spot in a storm, 
Along the mist-wreathed ridges 

Their crowded columns form ; 
The helmets and the gray-coats 

Scarce pistol-shot ahead, — 
They are on us — let us at them — 

Unavenged we have bled ! 
Steady ! The eager rifle 

Is warming at our cheeks ; 
Yon column's head is melting 

As the levelled minie speaks. 
Forward, forward, form and forward ! 

Fast as floods through river sluice 
The yeomanry of England 

On the Muscovite are loose. 
What, bide they there to meet us, 

That phalanx of gray rock ? 
In vain ! No human bulwark 

Can breast the coming shock. 

36 



Inkermann 



At them — on them — o'er them — through 
them 

The Red Line thunders still ; 
A cheer, a charge, a struggle, 

And we sweep them from the hill. 
Not a man had we left living 

Of the masses marshalled there. 
But their siege-guns in the gorges 

Stay our conquering career. 
Then, as we breathe from slaughter, 

And ere we close our ranks, 
The foe, one column routed. 

Hurls a fresh one on our flanks. 
Unappalled and unexhausted, 

We welcome the new war. 
Though like locusts in midsummer 

Swarm the legions of the Czar. 
Fifty thousand men are on us, 

Scarce a tithe of them are we, — 
Well might they swear to drive us 

Ere nightfall to the sea. 
Yet, St. George for merry England ! 

A volley, and we close, 
'Neath the martyr cross of bayonets 

Redder yet the Red Line grows. 



37 



Inkermann 



VI 

These are not the men of Alma 

Who are now so well at work ; 
On the Danube, at Silistrla 

They have schooled them 'gainst the Turk 
O'er the mountains of Circassia 

Their black eagles they have borne, 
And the children of their High Priest 

Lead the stern fanatics on. 
Point to point and breast to bosom. 

Hand to hand we madly clinch. 
And the ground we win upon them 

Is disputed inch by inch. 
The warrior blood of Britain 

Never rained so fast a tide, 
Man and captain fall together. 

Peer and peasant, side by side. 
We have routed thrice our number. 

Still their front looms thrice as vast. 
While our line is thinned and jaded 

And our men are falling fast. 
Upon them with the bayonet ! — 

Our powder waxes scant — 
What more with foe so near him 

Does British soldier want ? 

38 



Inkermann 



VII 

Once more — once more, borne backward 

Their stubborn legions fly, 
And we saw our brave commander, 

With his staff, come riding by ; 
Calmly he dared the danger. 

But a gloom was in his eye, 
For the mounds of his dead soldiers 

Lay around him thick and high. 
God knows his thought ! — It might be 

Of other mounds, I ween, — 
Of parapets, which, mounted. 

Such havoc had not been. 
But in brunt of battle ever 

Was the Saxon bosom bare, 
So we hailed him, as he passed us, 

With a hearty British cheer ; 
And as the nobles round him 

Were falling, did we pray. 
That his hero life amid the strife 

Might be spared to us that day. 
O dark the cloud that rested 

On our chieftain's anxious brow : 
He has staked his all on the Spartan wall - 

It must not fail him now ! 

39 



Inkermann 



VIII 

Then, as waveless in the tempest 

Broods the white wing of a gull, 
O'er the hurricane of battle 

Swept a momentary lull. 
Countless lay the dead and dying. 

Few and faint the living stood. 
Every blade of grass beneath us 

Had its drop of hero blood. 
To our knees the stiffening bodies 

Of our fallen comrades rose, 
But higher, deeper, thicker. 

Lay the holocaust of foes. 
And so fast the gore of Russia 

From the British bayonet runs. 
Trickling down our dinted rifles. 

That our hands slip on our guns. 
Far along the scarlet ridges 

Looming dim through mist and smoke. 
In scattered groups, divided 

By coppice and dwarfed oak, 
Rests the remnant of our army. 

Rests each motley regiment, 
Coldstream, Fusileer, and Ranger, 

Line, and Guard together blent, — 
40 



Inkermann 



To the charge still sternly leaning, 

Undismayed, undaunted still, 
Grimly frowning o'er the valley, 

Proven masters of the hill. 
A windgust from the mountain 

Swept the driving rack away. 
And we saw our battling brothers 

For the first time that dark day. 
But as up the white shroud drifted, 

St. George, what sight beneath ! — 
'T was as when the veil is lifted 

From the stony face of death. 
Right before us, right beneath us. 

Right around us, everywhere. 
The fresh hordes of the Despot 

On flank and centre bear : 
Around us and about us 

The armed torrent rolls. 
As around a foundering galley 

Glance the fins of bristling shoals. 
O never, England, never. 

Though aye outnumbered sore. 
Has thy world-encountering banner 

Faced such fearful odds before ! 



41 



Inkermann 



IX 

On they come, like crested breakers 

That would 'whelm us in their wrath, 
Or the winged flame of prairies 

Whirling stubble from its path. 
But with cheer as stout as ever 

To the charge again we reel, 
Again we mow before us 

Those harvests of stiff steel. 
Too hw^ alas ! the living 

These hydra hosts to stem. 
But our comrades lie around us. 

We can sleep at last with them. 
Rally, Britons, round your colors, 

And if no succor near. 
Then for God, our Queen, our country 

Let us proudly perish here ! 
Each hand and foot grows firmer 

As they yell their demon cry. 
Each soldier's glance grows brighter 

As his last stern task draws nigh ; 
By the dead of Balaklava 

We will show them how to die ! . . . 



42 



Inkermann 



Heard ye not that tramp behind us ? . . . 

If a foeman come that way, 
We may make one charge to venge us, 

And then look our last of day. 
As the tiger from the jungle, 

On the bounding column comes, 
We can hear their footfall ringing 

To the stern roll of their drums; 
We can hear their billowy surging 

As up the hill they pant, — 
O God ! How sweetly sounded 

The well-known " En avant ! " 
With their golden eagles soaring. 

Bloodless lips and falcon glance. 
Radiant with the light of battle, 

Came the chivalry of France. 
Ah ! full well, full well we knew them, 

Our bearded, bold allies. 
All Austerlitz seemed shining 

Its sunlight from their eyes. 
One breathing space they halted — 

One volley rent the sky, — 
Then the pas de charge thrills heavenward, 

" Vive r Empereur / " the cry. 

43 



Inkermann 



The answering cheer of Britain 

One moment thundered forth, 
The next — we trample with them 

The pale hordes of the North. 
Ye that have seen the lightning 

Through the crashing forest go 
Would stand aghast to see how fast 

We lay their legions low. 
They shrink — they sway — they falter — 

On, on ! — no quarter then ! 
Nor human hand, nor Heaven's command 

Could stay our maddened men. 
A flood of sudden radiance 

Bathes earth and sea and sky, 
Above us bursts exulting 

The sun of victory. 
Holy moment of stern rapture, 

The work of death is done. 
The Muscovite is flying. 

Grim Inkermann is won ! 



44 



All Souiy Day 



ALL SOULS' DAY 
1866 

HIGH in the bending trees the north 
wind sings, 
The shining chestnut to my feet is 
rolled ; 
The shivering mountains, bare as bankrupt 
kings. 
Sit beggared of their purple and their gold : 
The naked plain below 
Sighs to the clouds, impatient for its robe of 
snow. 

Death is in all things : yet how small it seems, 

God's chosen acre on this mountain side : 
A speck, a mote : while yonder cornland gleams 
With hoarded plenty, stretching far and 
wide. 
A hundred acres there 
Content not one : one acre serves a thousand 
here. 

45 



All Souls' Day 



On every cross or slab, a wreath — on some 
Two, three, or more — of radiant autumn 
leaves. 
Mingled with gold and white chrysanthemum ; 
Even the nameless, unmarked grave receives 
Some pledge from mortal love 
Unto peace-parted souls, we trust, with God 
above. 

The choral chant is hushed, the Service said : 

Noon, but already the last pilgrim gone : 
Brief visits pay the living to the dead. 

But once a year we meet o'er those we 
mourn. 
I wait unwatched, alone. 
To muse o'er some once loved, o'er many 
more unknown. 

That cross of marble, with its sculptured base. 
Guards the blest ashes of a friend whose 
form 
Was half my boyhood ; his arch, laughing face — 
The last you 'd take to front a coming storm. 
Or dare what none else durst : 
Read how he fell, of all the best and bravest, 
first ! 

46 



All Souls Bay 



Another pastor near him lies asleep, 

Fresh wreaths, love-woven, mark the newer 
sod ; 
Each lettered white cross bids me pause to 
weep 
Some lost companion or some man of God. 
Beneath this sacred ground. 
More friends I number than in all the world 
around. 

There, side by side, far from the forfeit home 

For which they vainly bled, three soldiers rest 
In sight of the round peak, whose bannered 
dome 
Crowns the defiles wherein the fiery crest 
Of a dead nation paled 
Before the heights, where erst the great Vir- 
ginian failed. 

Westward, a little higher up the steep. 

Rests a young mother — on her cross, a bar 
Of golden music : since she fell asleep 

The world she left has somehow seemed 
ajar; 
Those patient, peaceful eyes 
With which she watched the world, diffused 
sweet harmonies. 
47 



All Souls' Day 



For she was pure — pure as the snows of Yule 
That hailed her birth : pure as the autumnal 
snow 
That flecked her coffin ; she was beautiful. 
Heroic, gentle : none could ever know 
That face and then forget : 
Though vanished years ago, her smile seems 
living yet. 

And near her, happy in that nearness, lies 

The world-worn consul by his best-loved 
child — 
The first rest of a life of sacrifice : 

The native stars, that on his labors smiled 
So rarely, o'er the wave 
Beckoned him to the peace of home — and of 
the grave. 

Here, too, a relic of primeval ways 

And statelier manners, mingled with the grace 
Of Israel : in the evening of her days 

Baptized at fourscore — strongest of her 
race. 
Yet twice a child — that rain 
Supernal leaving all those years without a 
stain. 

48 



All Souls Bay 



And thou, young soldier, teach me how to turn 
From earth to heaven, as in the solemn hour 
Thy soul was turned. Ah ! well for thee to 

learn 
So soon that festal board and bridal flower 

May foil the out-stretched hand : 
That life's best conquest is the holy afterland. 



Holding the very summit of the slope, 
A gothic chapel, girt with evergreen 
And frailer summer foliage — still as hope — 
Watches the east for morning's earliest 
sheen ; 
Beneath it slumbers one 
For whom the tears of unextinguished grief 
still run. 

A twelvemonth mourned, yet deeper now the 

loss 
Than when first fell the slowly sudden doom. 
And on her pale breast lay the unmoving cross : 
J^one tenant of that solitary tomb. 
Love's daily widowed prayer 
Still craves reunion in thy chambered sepulchre. 

The sunset shadow of this chapel falls 
Upon a classmate's grave : a rare delight 
4 49 



All Souls Bay 



Laughed in his youth : but, one by one, the 
halls 
Of life were darkened, till, amid the night, 
A single star remained — 
Bright herald of the paradise by tears regained. 

Ah ! we forget them in our changing lot — 
Forget the past in present weal or woe ; 
But yet, perchance, more angels guard this spot 
Than wander in the living fields below : 

And, as I pass the gate, 
The world without seems strangely void and 
desolate. 



50 



The Country Doctor 



THE COUNTRY DOCTOR 

ALL SOULS' DAY— 1867 

DYING ? along the trembling moun- 
tain flies 
The fearful whisper fast from cot 
to cot ; 
Strong fathers stand aghast and mothers* eyes 
Melt as their white lips stammer, " Not, oh ! 
not 

Him of all others ? Nay, 
Not him who from our hearts so oft drove death 
away ? " 

Well may those pale groups gather at each door, 
Well may those tears that dread the worst be 
shed. 
The hand that healed their ills will bless no 
more. 
The life that served to lengthen theirs has 
fled; 

And while they pray and weep. 
Unto his rest he passeth like a child asleep. 

51 



The Country Doctor 



Ah ! this is sudden ! why, this very morn 

He rode amongst us ; sick men woke to 
hear 
The step of his black pacer ; the new-born 
Smiled at him from their cradles ; many a 
tear 

On faces wan and dim, 
He dried to-day ; to-night those cheeks are wet 
for him. 

For there he lies, together gently laid 

The hands we were so proud of, his white 
hair 
Making the silver halo that it made 

In life around his brow ; as if in prayer 
The gentle face composed, 
With nameless peace o'ershadowing the eyelids 
closed. 

And as beside him through the night we hold 

Our solitary watch, I had not started 
To hear my name break from him as of old, 
Or see the tranquil lips a moment parted. 
To speak the word unsaid. 
The last supreme adieu that instant death 
forbade. 

52 



The Country Doctor 



I dread the day-dawn, for his silent rest 

Befits the night ; I half believe him mine, 
While in the tapers' shadowy light his breast 
Seems heaving, and, amid the pale moonshine 
That wanders o'er the lawn. 
Crouch the still hounds unknowing that their 
master 's gone. 

But when the morning at his window stands 
In glory beckoning, and he answers not ; 
Not for the wringing of the widowed hands, 
Or orphans wrestling with their bitter lot, — 
I feel, old friend, too well. 
That naught can wake thee but the final 
miracle. 

Was it but yesterday, that at my gate. 

Beneath the over-arching oaks we met ? 
Throned in his saddle, statue-like he sate, 
A horseman every inch ; I see him yet, 
His morning mission done, 
His deep-mouthed pack behind him trailing, one 
by one. 

Mute are the mountains now ! No more that 
cry 
Of the full chase by all the breezes borne 

53 



The Country Doctor 



Down the defiles, while echo's swift reply 

Speeds the loud chorus ! Nevermore the 
horn 

Of our lost chief will shake 
Those tempest-riven crags, or pierce the star- 
tled brake ! 

Those summits were his refuge when the touch 
Of gloom was on him, and the gathered care 
Of a long life, that braved and suffered much, 
Drove him from beaten walks to breathe the 
air 

That haunts gray Carrick's crest. 
And spur from dawn to dusk till effort pur- 
chased rest. 

But yet, in all these thirty years, how few 
The days we saw not the familiar form 
Amid the valleys passing, till it grew 

Part of the landscape ; through the sun or 
storm 

With equal front he rode, 
Punctual as planets moving in the paths of 
God. 

I 've seen him, when the frozen tempest beat, 
Breast it as gayly as the birds that played 
54 



The Country Doctor 



Upon the drifts : and through the deadly heat 
That drove the fainting reapers to the shade, 
Smiling he passed along, 
Erect the good gray head, and on his lips a song. 

I Ve known him, too, by anguish chained abed, 
Forsake his midnight pillow with a moan. 

And meekly ride wherever Pity led 

To heal a sorrow slighter than his own ; 
Or rich or poor the same — 

It mattered not : let any sorrow call, he came. 

Thy life was sacrifice, my own old friend. 

Yet sacrifice that earned a sacred joy, 
P'or in thy breast kept beating to the end 
The trust and honest gladness of a boy ; 
The seventy years that span 
Thy course leave thee as pure as when their 
date began. 

Who could have dreamed the sharp, sad over- 
throw 
Of such a life, so tender, strong, and brave ? 
My pulse seems answering thy finger now — 
'T was one step from the stirrup to the grave ! 
Oh ! lift your load with care 
And gently to its rest the precious burden bear. 

55 



The Country Doctor 



All Souls' Day ! As they place him in the aisle 
The bells his youth obeyed for church are 
ringing ; 
And, as beneath the churchyard gate we file, 
To latest rite his honored relics bringing. 
You 'd think the dead had all 
Arrayed their little homes for some high festival. 

As if for him the flowering chaplets, strewn 
Throughout God's acre, breathe a second 
spring ; 
To him the ivy on the sculptured stone 

A welcome from the tomb seems whispering : 
The buried wear their best. 
As, in their midst, their old companion takes 
his rest. 

Yes, he is yours, not ours ; set down the bier : 

To you we leave him with a ready trust : 
Beneath this sod there 's scarce a spirit here 
That was not once his friend : Oh ! guard 
his dust ! 

And if your ashes may 
Thrill to old love, your graves are gladder than 
our hearts to-day. 



56 



A Card from the Violets 



A CARD FROM THE VIOLETS 

y^ RE you so sick, dear ? 
/ \ Oh ! we assure you, 
-^ -^ We 've come to cure you — 
Let us in — quick, dear. 

Did not expect us ? 

Fresh from the meadows, 

Sweeter than red rose. 
Can you reject us ? 

Will you not hear us — 

Blue as our eyes are. 

True as our sighs are. 
Nobody 's near us. 

Saint, can you censure 

Such sweet physicians — 

Fairy prescriptions — 
Will you not venture ? 

57 



A Card from the Violets 

Not even try us ? 

Morn's merry tear drops 

On us — the deer stops 
Ere he bounds by us. 

Bring us before you ; 

If you are sleeping 

We shall be peeping 
Sentinels o'er you. 

Or when we 've found you, 

If you are waking, 

We shall be shaking 
Perfumes around you. 

Poor little flowers — 

Angels might cherish 

Beauties that perish 
Sinless as ours. 

And when we 're faded — 

Out of the door there 

Throw us — there 's more where 
Our eyes were shaded ! 



58 



The Last Snow-lV?rath 



THE LAST SNOW-WREATH 

THAT gray forest — you remember, 
It was spring's first budding day, 
The last snow-wreath of December 
On the shaded hillside lay ; 
And your brow, though all was brightness, 

And the world and we at play, 
Had a winter in its whiteness 
That I could not smile away. 

That green forest — from the shadows 

Where the silver fleece had slept. 
Vigil o'er the dreaming meadows. 

Bands of blue-eyed violets kept ; 
And your brow — at once aglow, love, 

Fast the melting winter wept. 
And the last of all its snow, love. 

Into tearful summer swept. 

59 



The Last Snow-Wreath 



Mine at last, you bowed before me ! 

I could hear the won heart beat, 
Though the dim sun trembled o'er me. 

Though the earth swam at my feet. 
Are the stars already shining ? 

Ah ! the angel hours are fleet. 
When fond arms are first entwining 

And true lips first thrilling meet. 

On we sped — the green boughs weaving 

Fairy dance on mountain crest ; 
On we fled — the arched wave heaving 

In its exquisite unrest ; 
Yet no grace of stream or tree, love, 

In their sunset glory dressed, 
Matched your white arms waving free, love. 

Or the tremor of your breast. 

Let us home ! and cease to sigh, love. 

For the snow-wreath that has gone ; 
It has gone to gild the rye, love. 

And to plume the tasselled corn ; 
In the bending wheat to harden. 

Or to scent the enamelled thorn ; 
It has gone to paint the garden 

And to glisten in the morn. 
60 



The Last Snow-Wreath 



Peace to maiden plaint, then, dearest. 

That love's light hath melted pride; 
Gleameth not the lily fairest 

In the red-rose shadow dyed ? 
Not more pure the snow, fresh falling, 

Than those violets, azure-eyed ; 
But the whip-poor-will is calling — 

Let us home, my morning's bride. 



6i 



The Albatross 



THE ALBATROSS 

" rr^HINK of me often " — With a 
I smile 

-^ You said it, fair Lady, for you 

knew 
That everywhere and everywhile 
I think of you. 

Have you forgotten, though years ago, 

A summer's evening walk of ours, 
When earth was vocal and aglow 
With birds and flowers ? 

The sun was printing his parting kiss 
On the cross of the Convent spire. 
The brook bounded by with a laugh of bliss 
And eyes of fire. 

The lark slid lazily to his nest. 

His matin music still. 
The mourner minstrel wooed in the west 
The whip-poor-will. 
62 



The Albatross 



A star stole timidly to its place 

And stood fast in the deepening blue, 
And you bent your head, while over your face 
An arch smile flew : 

For my love was born with that tell-tale star 

In the holy hush of even. 
Timidly stealing to earth from afar — 
The far, high heaven. 

And you — how you lingered laughingly by 

That peaceful Convent gate. 
Then, turning from me your beautiful eye, 
Left me desolate I . 

Since then, since there, through joy or care. 

Through loving, loathing, hate. 
Have I thought of you, blooming, young, and 
fair. 

At that Convent gate. 

The storm of manhood has come and gone, 

I have fronted many a fate, 
But I never forgot the star that shone 
O'er that Convent gate. 

63 



The Albatross 



Ah, you knew it well, for the proud lip curled 

At a love, mute, hopeless, true ; 
You knew that I wearily walked the world, 
Thinking of you : 

Thinking of you these long, lost years 

Of penury, peril, pain : 
Thinking of you through sunshine and tears — 
Thinking in vain ! 

White, lonely, changeless, beautiful. 

Amid life's tempest-toss. 
Your image tranquilly sleeps on my soul — 
Its Albatross. 



64 



Beatrice 



BE ATRI CE 

WELL, as thou wilt, — but thou art 
lovelier now 
Than ever yet, — eyes softer shin- 
ing, — brow 
Fuller of thoughtful light ; and, whether less 
Thy loving then, a nobler tenderness 
Now tunes thy voice and fires thy velvet cheek. 
I shall obey : but I may sometimes seek 
Leave to return, for in my journeying 
I shall grow weary, and no other spring 
Can quench my thirst j besides, I shall have 

fears 
For thee, for thou hast lost the gift of tears, 
And thy fixed eyes look steadfastly at woe 
Too long beheld, and fill, but ne'er o'erflow. 
When the dull days creep on, — no more, no 

more. 
The swift step on thy staircase, at thy door 
The quick, sure tap, — the strong hand lightly 
laid 
5 65 



Beatrice 



In thine a moment, — may it not be said 
" There sits she sighing in her solitude 
For her lost Minstrel, — she has dearly rued 
Her late resolve, too late deferred to save: 
Poor child, there will be roses on her grave 
Ere springtime ! " Thus 't would please them 
best. 

But, sweet, 
When in the twilight, by my vacant seat. 
Thou 'rt lying, and the crimson cushion hides 
In thy brown ringlets, — when the river glides. 
Dimmed with thy shadow only, — when the 

stone 
Carved with thy symbol name, by thee alone 
Is visited, — it seemeth, lady, then 
Thou may'st have need of me — that once 

again, — 
Nay, hist ! — I doubt thee not. I know of old 
Thy grand defiant brow, — thy bearing bold 
In sorrow's night, — the step elastic, — gaze 
Starward unmovingly, — the song of praise 
Hymned to the angels : they will care for thee, — 
What need of mortal love ! Yet could it be 
That some soft vesper-time, when incense 

wreathes 

66 



Beatrice 



Thy chapel, and the rustic anthem breathes, 
Or some fair summer's night, when laid at 

rest. 
Thou and thy cross of gold ^ an instant guest, 
I might steal up and whisper. Peace ! 

Not yet — 
Bear with me, love, a moment longer, — let 
This white hand slumber on in mine, and place 
Thy head against my shoulder, with thy face 
Upturned ! — There, — stir not, — sleep ! 'T is 

like a trance. 
That night of our first meeting, when the 

dance 
Flashed by unheeded ; like a dream the morn 
When, — brighter sunrise ! — silently was born 
Thy bountiful, broad love ; and the far seas. 
Where in the shadow of the Pyrenees, 
My soul first climbed the heights of thine, and 

gave 
Thee back an equal guerdon ; and the wave 
Repassed, the fleet five years of Paradise, — 
The Eden that was ours, — until with eyes 
Opened to sudden knowledge, at our love's 
Stern strength we trembled. Through the even- 
ing groves 

67 



Beatrice 



There swept no angry challenge, but the low 
Grand voice upbraided tenderly ; for though 
Our lips oft drank the dews, we never ate 
The fruit of that fair tree ; and at the gate, 
The Angel, smiling, sank his fiery brand 
In pity as we passed, — not hand in hand, 
But parting in the wilderness. 

Sleep on. 
My lost one, — each will walk the world alone. 
Since heaven so wills it ; with thy daily cares 
Thou wilt deal calmly, and thy guardian 

prayers 
Shall follow me, that I may sometimes find 
Grandeur in nature, fragrance in the wind. 
Beauty in woman, gentleness in man; 
For O, it seems as if the stream that ran 
Beside my soul were dry, and all things have 
A withered look ; the sunbeam in the wave 
No longer dances, — the cold clouds refuse 
Their sunset glow, — the unsought roses lose 
Their perfumed blushes, — dimly wandereth 
The moon amid the tree-tops, pale as death. 
Weary and chill, — and I can scarce rejoice 
In music's benediction, and the voice 
Of friendship sounds like solemn mockery. 
68 



Beatrice 



Why, e'en the tingHng cheek and soaring eye 
Of genius, visioned with some splendid dream. 
Seem scenic tricks ; — unwooed, unwelcome 

gleam 
The plumed thoughts, — nor have I heart to win 
The broidered butterflies we catch and pin 
To poet desks, in boyhood. Yet fear not 
The future ; I shall bravely front my lot. 
With the one rapture manhood ne'er foregoes. 
The stately joy of mastering its woes. 
No eye shall see me falter, — I shall ask 
No respite on the wheel, — whate'er the task 
The circling days appoint, I humbly trust 
For strength to do it ; — there shall be no rust 
On sword or shield, — howe'er the heart may 

ache 
Beneath the goad ; yet, sweet, for thy dear sake 
I '11 wear the yoke, until the furrow opes 
A little deeper, — then we '11 end it, hopes 
And fears. 

Yet sometimes, when the old desire 
Of rhyming comes, and the familiar choir 
Of cherub voices, with returning song. 
Make my sad chamber musical ; when throng 
The cloistered faces, with uplifted veil, 

69 



Beatrice 



Each with remembered smile, — serene and pale, 
As those stone priestesses that walk in Rome 
And florence, shall thy living image come 
And stand before me, motioning the rest 
Away. And I believe — O ! stir not, lest 
Waking bring utter anguish — that when years. 
The morning years of life, have passed, and 

tears 
And time and sorrow shall have so o'erthrown 
The temple of thy beauty, that unknown 
We two may walk the ways where now, alas ! 
The finger follows, and false whispers pass 
'Twixt smiling friends, — when perished youth's 

last charm. 
E'en they who blamed us most, exclaim, "What 

harm 
In their now meeting ? " — let me, love, believe 
This parting not forever — that some eve 
Like this, I may approach thee, kneeling, smooth 
Thy loose brown hair, warm thy cold fingers, 

soothe 
The aching bosom, lay my hand upon 
Thy brow, and touch these dear lips — thus — 

Sleep on ! 



70 



La Velata 



LA VELATA 

(Pitti Palace — No. 245) 

YOU tread upon graves, my Lady, 
And, walk where you will, my 
sweet, 
You will still leave a ruined life, or two. 

Like mine lying under your feet. 
Yet your glance is as clear and cloudless, 

You carry as happy a head. 
As the vestal whose torch lit the altar stone 
While the hearts of a hecatomb bled. 

Hail, Queen of the Dead, my Lady, 

Of dead hearts that beat sullenly on, 
Waking once a year in a living tomb 

To ache for the smile that is gone. 
Sweep on with your laugh of music, — 

But, wander wherever you may. 
Some new grave will open beneath your feet. 

And the Black Cross still mark your way. 



71 



Donna 



DONNA 

OLADY, in the morning of our meeting, 
When love around us, flowerlike, 
awoke. 
Bright o'er the face that gladdened at my 
greeting 
The blush unbidden broke. 
And your eyes trembled to your heart's quick 
beating 

Whene'er I spoke. 

Dear lady, then your form so softly rounded. 

Still with a lingering girl-light shone ; 
Your lips, whose laugh like fountain-music 
sounded. 
No sorrow e'er had known. 
For all the pulses of your being bounded 
To love alone. 

n 



Donna 



We parted then : and now, in day's declining, 

In the soul's twilight time we meet : 
Sweet, let me feel again that arm's soft 
twining — 
Quick, for the hours are fleet. 
And I, an exile, while your youth was shining. 
Kneel at your feet. 

Ah, the twin roses of your cheeks have faded, 

Your brow has lost its halo-light. 
The dewy sunshine of your glance is 
shaded 
With clouds of coming night ; 
E'en the brown splendor of your hair is 
braided 

With mourning white. 

Yet day is fairer 'neath the mountain sleeping 

Than when in orient pomp it rose ; 
The brook bounds brighter for the winter's 
keeping 
When spring unlocks the snows ; 
And you are lovelier now, when years of 
weeping 

Thus smiling close. 
73 



Donna 



O teach those eyes again their blessed beam- 
ing ! 

Nay, shrink not that I hold you fast — ■ 
Before us such a starry future gleaming, 

Why grieve for mornings past ? 
Perchance our mingled tears, now mutely stream- 

May be the last. 



74 



Blight and Bloom 



BLIGHT AND BLOOM 

I 

DID we not bury them ? 
All those dead years of ours, 
All those poor tears of ours, 
All those pale pleading flowers — 
Did we not bury them ? 

Yet, in the gloom there, 
See how they stare at us, 
Hurling despair at us, 
Rising to glare at us 

Out of the tomb there ! 

Curse every one of them ! 
Kiss, clasp, and token, 
Vows vainly spoken, 
Hearts bruised and broken — 

Have we not done with them ? 
75 



Blight and Bloom 



Are we such slaves to them ? 
Down where the river leaps, 
Down where the willow weeps, 
Down where the lily sleeps, 

Dig deeper graves for them. 

Must we still stir amid 
Ghosts of our buried youth. 
Gleams of life's morning truth. 
Spices and myrrh, forsooth . . . ? 

Seal up the pyramid ! 



II 



Be still, my heart, beneath the rod, 

And murmur not ; 
He too was Man — the Son of God 

And shared thy lot : 



Shared all that we can suffer here, 

The gain, the loss, 
The bloody sweat, the scourge, the sneer. 

The Crown, the Cross, 

76 



Blight and Bloom 



The final terror of the tomb, — 

His guiltless head 
Self-dedicated to the doom 

We merited. 

Then sigh not for earth's Edens lost, 

Time's vanished bliss; 
The heart that suffers most, the most 

Resembles His. 



11 



Shemselnihar 



SHEMSELNIHAR 

(From "The Arabian Nights") 

FIRST Afeef spake: "Thy Favorite is 
dead ! 
Touch not those lips, my Master, they 
were false : 
Weep not for one who had no smiles for thee." 
But Haroun said, 

His dim eyes fastened on the face where life 
And death seemed striving which should paint 
it fairest, 

" Peace, she hath loved ! " 

Then Wazief spake : " There was a Persian 

dog 
Who died this morning — she has gone to meet 

him : 
To share his grave, she leaves a throne with 

thee." 

But Haroun said, 

78 



Shemselnihar 



" How many hearts will cease their beat with 

mine, 
As hers with his, because they loved their 

Caliph ? 

Say, O ye faithful ! " 

But Mesrour muttered, " To the boat with her ! 
Those dainty dancing girls are whispering now 
Of her mad doating on the Persian dog ! " 
But Haroun said, 

" Build her a tomb of porphyry and jet. 
Where fountains murmur and where cypress 

waves : 
Love is a light seen once a thousand years. 
And she hath loved ! " 



79 



Lazarus 



LAZARUS 

I HAD lived, I had loved, 
And had lived and loved in vain 
I had said unto my soul, 
" You shall never love again : 
I can brave the bitter night, 

Bear that all is dross and dust. 
Dare all sorrows save the blight 
Of another broken trust." 



But it came, ah, it came 

In a shape so sweet and pure. 
Never hope that ever shone 

Seemed so gentle, seemed so sure ; 
For the winds without my will 

Bore the blossom to my breast, 
And, so being human still, 

Where it fell, I let it rest. 
80 



Lazarus 

Soon It bloomed above my heart, 

And I said, " At last, at last 
Here 's the rose I vainly sought 

In the gardens of the past." 
So I laughed and cried aloud, 

" Break, O earth around me, break, 
Away with worm and shroud, 

Lo, I 'm living for her sake ! " 

Then with eyes at last unclosed. 

And with hands at length unclasped. 
Slowly stirring in my shroud 

At my flower I feebly grasped ; 
But as if beneath a frost 

Shrank the swift-recoiling head, 
I had scared her with my ghost. 

She had taken me for dead. 

" Ah, my Queen ! ah, my Queen ! 

See my lips are running red. 
They can kiss back to your leaves 

All the crimson that has fled. 
Wake, oh, wake, to watch and wave 

O'er my slumbers as before, 
I will back into my grave, 

I will never leave it more." 
6 8i 



Lazarus 



So I creep back to my tomb 

Which seems twice as deep and drear. 
Though all fairer for that frost 

Blooms my Queen without a peer. 
Mine alone, till far her fame 

With each wanton zephyr fled — 
Ah, my grave is still the same, 

But no rose is at its head. 



82 



The King s Speech 



THE KING'S SPEECH 



I 



'LL heal the sting, — 

Man's sting, — the human sting at Na- 



ture's spring ! 



Behold the Master's Wonder-book unrolled. 
Explore with gladdened eye, and heart con- 
soled, — 
Whilst I its pages one by one unfold ! " 
Thus spake the King. 

And lo, a sheet 
Of trembling azure clothes the mountain's feet. 
Dark boats go glancing through it with lit oars 
Of dripping silver, — all the villaed shores 
Repeat themselves in crystal, — proudly soars 

The radiant sleet 

Of purple peaks 
Beneath whose crests the mellowed thunder 

speaks. 
Half-way to heaven the birdlike chapel broods, 

83 



The King' s Speech 



Soft winds sweep sighing through the slanting 

woods 
Between whose shadows flash the cloud-born 

floods 

In jewelled streaks. 

New visions throng — 
The canvas shifts and now we float along, 
Rounding a dead volcano in the light 
Of rising stars, while every eye is bright — 
Hers brightest — as wc hail the rising night 

With jest and song. 

Sweet vision, say, 
Must thou too like thy sister pass away ? 
Alas, remorseless hills between us stride, 
As eunuchs gather round a Sultan's bride, 
Shielding her beauty from the evil-eyed ! 

Stay, Phantom, stay ! 

All changed again ! 
Above the clouds we wander, the dim plain 
Shrunk to a garden ; 'gainst the bridal sun 
Fond snow-peaks lean their livid cheeks and 

run 
To earth in tears ; now heaven itself is won 
And won in vain ! 

84 



The King' s Speech 



Another change. 
Between the twin crests of a parted range 
The sky has fallen and sleeps in silvered blue ; 
And here a Poet's soul comes with the dew 
To Chillon, murmuring all the midnight through 

With voices strange. 

Away ! — our prow 
Cuts the crisp wave — new scenes, new lands 

— and now 
Gleams the Snow Monarch on his Gothic 

throne, 
Orphaned of heaven and earth, defiant, lone. 
Save when the sun's last scarlet kiss is thrown 
Upon his brow. 

Green seas of ice 
Beneath our guided feet — gray glaciers rise 
Weeping themselves away, yet ever fed 
By the fresh tears their sire is doomed to 

shed ; 
At last his awful front we touch and tread 

Upon the skies. 

" Fool, dost thou cling 
Fast to thy folly ? Must the Master fling 
His wonders round thy pathway, but to whet 

85 



The King's Speech 



The edge of yearning — see thy heart still set 
Upon the human — deeper in the net ? " 
Thus spake the King. 

" What if I bring 
My unveiled glory to assuage thy sting ? 
Will it avail when thou dost clearly prize 
Better than earth or heaven, than seas or skies, 
The human love that burns in human eyes ? " 

Thus spake the King. 

And then I said, 
Are not those eyes thy work — was not that 

head 
Cast in thy mould — is not thy breath divine 
Upon these lips — have not the Bread and 

Wine 
Retrieved the Fall and made her image Thine ? 

Hast thou not shed 

A holier grace 
Upon her form, — Thine image in her face 
Is it not worthier worship than the snows 
Kissed by the sunset into domes of rose. 
Or blue lake heaving in its rapt repose ? 

Let me embrace 
86 



The Kings Speech 



My lot : and cling 
Unto the human, I accept its sting; 
I 've measured it with Nature and with Art, 
And find it next Thee. Frown not ere we 

part ! 
" 1 never frown upon a living heart ! " 
Thus spake the King. 



87 



Aladdin's Palace 



ALADDIN'S PALACE 

(Read at the Half Century Celebration of Mt. St. Mary's 
College, Emmitsburg, Md., 1858.) 

A LADDIN'S PALACE, in a single night, 
/ % From base to summit rose ere morning 

r\. light, 

A pillared mass of porphyry and gold. 
Gem sown on gem, and silk o'er silk unrolled ; 
So from the dust our young Republic springs 
Before the dazzled eyes of Eastern Kings. 
Not like old Rome, slow spreading into state. 
The century that freed beholds us great, 
Sees our broad empire belt the western world. 
From main to main our starry flag unfurled ; 
Sees in each port where Albion's Sea-Kings 

trail 
Their purple plumes, Columbia's snowy sail. 
Three deep the loaded decks our long wharves 

line. 
Three deep on buoyant hoops fast flounces 

shine, 

88 



Aladdin s Palace 



While thrice three-story brown stone proudly 

tells 
The tale of Mammon's modern miracles, 
Marking full fifty places in a square 
Where the born beggar dies the Millionaire. 

But yet remember, glorious as we are, 
Aladdin's Genie left one window bare : 
And we, perchance, upon a close review. 
May find our Palace lights unfinished too, — 
Some slighted panel in the stately hall. 
Some broidered hanging stinted on the wall, 
Nay, e'en some jewels gone, that graced us 

when 
All men were free here — even gentlemen. 
Of all the slaves in social bondage nursed, 
Pater-familias stands supremely first : 
Proud of his bondage, tickled with his chains. 
The parent cringes while the stripling reigns. 
Down with the Dotard ! consecrate the Boy ! 
Since Age must suffer, let bright Youth enjoy. 
Drink morning in ! — old eyes were meant to 

wake : 
Shake hands with ruin ! — old hearts never break. 
Welcome the worst — 't is but to close the door 
And pack the outlaw to some College-Cure. 

89 



Aladdin's Palace 



Alas ! the tutor apes the parent fool, 

The idle birch hangs rotting in the school. 

Touch the young tyrant — like Olympian Jove 

The avenging sire defends his injured love ; 

Clutches a cowhide, contemplates a suit. 

Talks wildly of a martyr and a brute. 

The worst disgrace his free-born son can know 

Is not to merit, but receive a blow ; 

Honor, that prompts the pistol, damns the 

rod, — 
Let beasts alone divide the scourge — with 

God. 

Achilles saved, what next ? Go home and rear 
That up-town palace ? — Why, you 're never 

there. 
Down by the docks your home is o'er the desk, 
From morn to night curled like an arabesque, 
Spinning the rich cocoon for child and wife. 
Though, like the worm, the tribute costs your 

life. 
Crawl home at midnight, to the basement go. 
Hug the lit fender, toast the slippered toe ; 
One well-earned moment rest the throbbing 

head. 
Though all the ceiling own the Lancer's tread, 
90 



Aladdin's Palace 



Or dare the ball-room, you '11 not spoil the 

feast, 
'T is the old story — Beauty and the Beast. 

That Lion leaning o'er my Lady's chair 

May start — but she will never know you *re 
near. 

Perchance some fopling compliments your 
taste, 

His easy arm around Miss Mary's waist ; 

Admires your Elliott, wonders how he caught 

Your mouth's full meaning — " Aw, I re-aul-ly 
thought 

Those sheep were Ommegancks ! " — Back to 
your den ! 

Your girl's far wiser cheek was tingling then. 

Better be dead than ope those honest eyes 

To half your marble mansion's mysteries. 

Press your lone pillow, scheme to-morrow's 
pelf, 

Your daughter, trust her, can protect herself: 

Dread neither foreign Count nor native Fool, 

Her heart was buried at a Boarding School. 

Ah, not for nothing that smooth cheek's de- 
cay — 

She knows too much to risk a runaway. 
91 



Aladdin ' s Pal a ce 



While beauty lasts, perchance the Young 

Moustache 
May spoil the cooing of the Man of Cash ; 
But trust to time, your wrinkled belle will take 
Some solid soul — some bank that cannot 

break, — 
And reign the darling of a dull adorer, 
Precisely as her mother did before her. 

From private morals pass to public taste ; 
One jewel missing, can the next be paste ? 
A race of readers, we can surely claim 
A dozen writers with a world-wide name, — 
One drama that can hold the stage a season, 
Two actors that confound not rant with rea- 
son, — 
A minstrel equal to an average air. 
An artist that has brains as well as hair ? 
Alas ! the river where the millions drink 
Flows from a Helicon of tainted ink ; 
Lower and lower the darkening stream descends. 
Till, lost in filth, the sacred fountain ends. 
Who reads Andrea ? — here 's a penny tale 
That melts the milkmaid o'er her foaming pail ; 
Who weeps with Luria that can weekly sob 
With all the victims of Sylvan us Cobb ? 
92 



Aladdin's Palace 



To " In Memoriam " why trembling turn 
When fonder pathos flows from Fanny Fern ? 
Why wake the organ wail of Hiawatha 
When piping publishers assume the author ? 
And what, in turn, cares genius for the age ? 
" Boz " gaily rattles ofF his five-pound page ; 
Pendennis lazily dictates his story. 
Sure of his pay, superbly dead to glory ; 
O'ershadowed Browning, sickening in the van. 
Sheds Ariel's wings to roll with Caliban. 
But peace to parchment — bid the canvas 

gleam ; 
The pen rebellious, let the brush redeem. 
Imperial Art, thy highest hope record ! — 
Behold a primrose dots the dewy sward. 
Raphael dethroned, what triumphs now decree ? 
The twilight's bronze on blossomed cherry 

tree. 
Madonnas done with, Magdalens forbidden — 
Lo, yonder rock in reverend mosses hidden. 
Ah, sweet to think when time and reason blight 
The budding of the last Pre-Raphaelite, 
Those wondrous Dresden eyes shall still, as now. 
Teach saints to worship, infidels to bow. 
That Babe transfigured on the Virgin bosom 
Outlive the daisy and the apple blossom. 

93 



Aladdin s Palace 



Kings rule the East, the Merchant rules the 

West : 
Save round his hearth, supreme his high behest. 
For him the captive lightning rides the main. 
For him rent mountains hide the screaming 

train, 
For him the placer spreads its golden sands. 
The steamer pants, the spicy sail expands ; 
For him the quarry splits the moaning hill. 
For him Laborde imports her newest trill. 
Submissive science smooths his lordly path. 
States court his nod and Senates dread his 

wrath ; 
Erect, undaunted, eager, active, brisk, 
A front for ruin, nerve for any risk ; 
Shy of the snare, impatient of the chance. 
The world a chess-board 'neath his eagle glance. 
Armed with a Ledger — presto pass — he carves 
And spends ten fortunes where a genius starves. 
No robber knight that ever drove a-field 
Bore braver heart beneath his dinted shield. 
Atilt with fortune, if he win the prize. 
The turnpike trembles, marble cleaves the 

skies. 
Or, lost both stirrups, let him bite the plain. 
His dying song still " Lobster and Champagne ! " 

94 



Aladdin s Palace 



O land of Lads, and Liberty, and Dollars I 
O Nation first in schools and last in scholars ! 
Where few are ignorant, yet none excel, 
Whose peasants read, whose statesmen scarcely 

spell; 
Of what avail that science light the way 
When dwindling Senates totter to decay, — 
Like some tall poplar withered at the head. 
Our middle green, but all the summit dead. 
We do not ask that mind and manners meet — 
Utopian dream — in every Justice seat : 
In troubled times 't is not to be expected 
That Law and Grammar be at once pro- 
tected : 
We can endure that barristers dispense 
Tropes, neither rhetoric nor common sense. 
While all the rabble bolt the fluent store 
Of broken image, battered metaphor, — 
But, great Diana, when we 're only known. 
In courts where Adams trod and Franklin 

shone. 
By mute Ambassadors who grandly scorn to 
Maim any language save the one they 're born 

to; 
Wlien laughing Europe vainly would escape 
Yankee sublime, refulgent in red tape, 
95 



Aladdin s Palace 



Might not the torch that fired the Ephesian 

Dome 
Be well employed — a little nearer home ? 
Of what avail the boast of steam and cable, 
If doomed to grovel 'neath the curse of Babel ? 
Low droops our Eagle's eye to find us still 
Cowed 'neath his wing — by Albion's gray- 
goose quill. 
Ye who have sipped the sweet Horatian page, 
And burned with Juvenal in Roman rage; 
Ye in whose bosom glows the true antique. 
Whose solid armor 's laced with genuine Greek, 
Whose souls, high reaching to the fountain, 

find 
The classic secrets that still sway mankind, — 
What though the public hail with languid 

praise 
Your prim orations or primeval lays ; 
What though Reviews, with accents soft as silk, 
Skim all your cream and then reject your milk; 
What though your polished pen scarce earn 

a garret. 
While double entry points to peace and claret ; 
What though the heart, too long condemned to 

ache 
For mocking chaplets, ask but leave to break ; 

96 



Aladdin s Palace 



Toil on, toil on, there 's no such word as fail, 
Heaven sends the wind if we but set the sail : 
Toil on, — the world's best laurels only bloom 
Above the mound that marks the Martyr's 
tomb ! 

Know ye the fields that smooth the Pilgrim 

coast, 
The lawn's soft slope in azure ocean lost. 
The garden bounded by the billow's foam. 
The gables stately as a Baron's home ? 
Approach : along the cornland and the wold, 
October dies in crimson and in gold ; 
That giant elm has scarce a score of leaves 
To shade the voiceless nest beneath the eaves. 
See the bright Sabbath morning silent break, 
Save where the wild-fowl fans his tiny lake, 
Save where, with ceaseless wail, the warning 

sea 
Chants its one awful word — " Eternity." 
Ah, Seth, unload the rifle, coil the line. 
Let the coot fly, the haddock lash the brine, 
O'er the mute hills, untracked, the wild deer 

run. 
The angler sleeps — thy hunter's deeds are 

done ! 
7 97 



Aladd'ni s Palace 



Steal in with muffled tread — the struggle past, 
Released from thought, the grand brow rests 

at last. 
As rests in Abbey aisle some brave broad shield, 
A nation's buckler on the battlefield. 
No shroud surrounds him — he has gone to rest. 
As heroes love to go, in harness drest : 
Folded the hands that never rose in wrath 
Unless to sweep a traitor from his path ; 
Dim the dark eye before whose rapt command 
Disunion, like a spectre, fled the land. 
God grant that Julia's self the father meet 
Since Julia's image may no longer greet ! 
God guard that willowed slab by Marsh- 
field's wave. 
Where he still lives beneath his laurelled grave ! 
God send some faithful heart, some fearless 

spur. 
To fill the void of that one Sepulchre ! 
The Forum yawns ! Come, Curtius, to thy 

work ! 
Fate summons the Collegian — not the Clerk. 

Green be the hero's grave ! — But who shall 

paint 
Our greater loss — that purer gem — the Saint ? 

98 



Aladdin's Palace 



We who are wholly plunged in pious labors, 
Who plume ourselves and meekly peck our 

neighbors ; 
Whose outward life, so gravely circumspect. 
Proclaims — our title clear — the sole Elect j 
We who, knee-deep in spiritual feasts. 
Bewail the shallower ecstasies of priests ; 
We who serenely chant the rights of laymen 
While pastors starve and bishops drudge like 

draymen ; 
We have no sins — no zealots that behold 
A Creamcheese in each shepherd of the fold — 
No pale devotes to chronicle the fancies 
That gild the seraph lips of Father Francis. 
We shrink from Sue and Sand, our only care is 
To sigh with Kempis, or to sift with Suarez ; 
With fiction false to faith we never grovel, 
Our lightest reading, the religious novel; 
We count our soul-refreshing tales by scores. 
Where heroes sin not — save in being bores ; 
Where heroines sing like controversial linnets, 
Converting heretics in twenty minutes, — 
Here Agnes answers to the convent bell. 
There jilted William meditates a cell. 
But let a Man stand up and lash the age. 
Let reason rule, and truth inspire his page, 

99 



LOfC. 



Aladdin s Palace 



Let folly quake to hear his lordly tread, 
And captive error hang her hydra head, — 
Then, just so long as our celestial selves 
Escape a drubbing, Brownson tops our shelves ; 
But once the scourge on our ow^n shoulders 

laid — 
Stop the Review ! — gag the gray renegade I 

Yes, praised be type and steam, our blindness 

o'er. 
The Christian world is wiser than of yore. 
No simple Barons now corrupt the Church 
By leaving rich relations in the lurch ; 
No stricken Knight, with half remembered 

prayer. 
Beats his broad breast and makes a monk his 

heir. 
Fie, fie. Sir Hugo, like a cut-throat live. 
Then, dying, bribe thy Maker to forgive ? 
Tempt not the skies with gifts, — we never do — 
Heaven asks no largess — just a tear or two. 
Our peaceful fingers guiltless of the sword 
What call for alms to pacify the Lord ? 
The Priest stands ready harnessed — naught to 

pay, 

Since he who gave disdains to take away. 

100 



Aladdin s Palace 



Let pompous heretics by will provide 

For school and mission, — we have no such 

pride. 
Enough for us, our earthly errand run, 
To pass an untithed purse from sire to son. 
Too modest to bestow lest men applaud, 
Faith just too feeble to invest with God, 
Just zeal sufficient to shun godless knowledge. 
And just too little to endow a College. 
Hugo may pamper Abbots with his acres. 
Ours shall be anybody's — but our Maker's. 

In darker ages, when the morning dews 

Of Faith were fresh upon the world, when 

pews 
Were yet unborn, our simple fathers thought — 
Such ignorance belongs to souls untaught — 
That the true aim of pious decoration 
Should be the Minster — not the congregation. 
Since then, the riper Flock far wiser grown. 
Neat brick and mortar mimic chiselled 

stone \ 
Yon altar angel kneels in florid plaster 
Where cherub wings once shone in alabaster. 
But let the ceiling gape, the organ jingle. 
The lazy spire at last ascend in shingle ; 

10 I 



Aladdin s Palace 



Glance down the nave — survey the sacred 

scene — 
One billowy sweep of lace and crinoline; 
Each tiny hat half hidden in its feather, 
Bright as a daisy beaming through the 

heather — 
Out with the Rose or Oriel's lesser lustre, 
Here all the colors of the rainbow cluster. 
Yet say not Faith hath wholly quenched her fires 
When Albany's Twin Minsters lift their spires. 
When fast responsive to the Mitre's beck. 
Each man stands ready with his cheerful 

check 3 
Prompt as the Spartan at his country's call, 
A hundred come — a hundred thousand fall. 

When the good Caliph all his coffers brought, 
And, gem in hand, his turbaned craftsmen 

wrought ; 
When vainly jewelled with a Kingdom's store 
The unfinished window clamored still for 

more, 
Aladdin called the Spirit that begun 
His radiant Palace, and the work was done. 
So here the sail may gleam, the minstrel sing. 
The forum close, the victor warrior bring 

102 



Aladdiri s Palace 



His wreath, — but still the Temple of our sires 
An Artist mightier than man requires. 
We too must call our Spirit. Glance around — 
The terrace at our feet is hallowed ground : 
Climb that green hill, — those levelled walks 

that glide 
Around the Chapel — by the torrent's side ; 
That shaded mound where still the Grotto 

stands — 
All these are relics now, touched by the hands 
That led alike the shriven soul to grace, 
Or smoothed the frown from Nature's erring 

face. 
Question the valley — here how oft there trod. 
Missal in hand, along the weary road, 
A swift, frail shape, on some new mercy 

bent. 
That seemed to smile with angels as it went. 
Go farther — pierce the aching world beyond 
The circle of those calm blue lines that bound 
This Sanctuary — count the mitres — scan 
The vast results of that one Heaven-sent 

man : 
Ask mountain laymen, deep in stocks or deeds. 
Why still they wear their medals, tell their 

beads ; 

103 



Aladdin s Palace 



Ask that gray band of Priests what trumpet 

call 
Beneath Christ's standard ranged and armed 

them all ; 
Ask either Prelate whose command controls 
The Christian being of a million souls, 
Who first inspired his half unconscious feet 
To tread the heights where flamed the Para- 
clete ? 
Hark ! prelate, laymen, priests, together say — 
The Angel Guardian of the Mount — Brut^. 

My friends, Aladdin's Palace needs such men — 
The Saint at work, 't is finished — not till 
then. 



104 



Byron 



BYRON 

(Written in reply to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's attack.) 

LET him rest in his shame and splendor, 
In splendor and shame let him lie; 
'whisper low, for the grave should de- 
fend her. 
Curse no more, for he cannot reply. 
'Tis not well to stand over the body 

From which a great soul has just fled 
And smite the poor lips till they 're bloody 
For the sake of a sin that is dead. 

O pierce not into their mystery, 

O pry not into the gloom ; 
Leave truth to the touchstone of history — 

The seals are too fresh on the tomb. 
No word on the vault need be graven 

Till the hinge has fallen to rust; 
And we, — we will keep off the raven 

Till the dead has returned to dust. 
105 



Byro7i 

For a poet though he may grieve us 

At times, with a baleful lay. 
Is ever the last to leave us. 

The last that we let decay. 
The siren song we inherit 

Keeps sounding so fresh and near, 
That we seem, both in flesh and spirit. 

Still standing beside his bier. 

Why should a libel borrowed 

From oblivion stain his corse. 
When each line on the cold white forehead 

Shows the finger of remorse ? 
He was an archer regal. 

Who laid the mighty low. 
But his arrows were fledged by the eagle 

And sought not a fallen foe. 

With the front of a lost archangel 

He braved a frowning world. 
And at maiden, man, and evangel 

His fiery scofling hurled — 
Railing 'gainst earth and heaven alike. 

Till the haughty eye grew dim. 
But never lifted a shroud to strike, 

As hath twice been done to him ! 
io6 



By 



ron 



Why conjure a phantom terror 

From the ashes of the great, 
And, worse than vilest error, 

Sp«eed the horrible debate ? 
Why, when the world is listening 

To minstrels robed in light. 
Wile us back to the morbid glistening 

Of a Spirit of the Night ? 

He has met the final audit. 

He has faced the Judge Supreme ^ 
Man's malison now, or plaudit. 

Will but reach him as a dream. 
Wait, till the life-long beating 

Of each bosom is laid bare 
At that vast sepulchral meeting, — 

Then — stone him if you dare ! 



107 



The Ivory Crucifix 



THE IVORY CRUCIFIX 



WITHIN an attic old at Genoa, 
Full many a year, I ween. 
Had lain a block of ivory, 
The largest ever seen. 

Though wooing centuries have wiled 

Its purity away 
Gaunt Time had made a slender meal, 

So well it braved decay. 

If we may trust tradition's tongue. 

Some mastodon before 
The wave kissed Ararat's tall peak 

The splendid trophy wore. 

Certes, no elephant e'er held 

Aloft so rich a prize, 
Not India's proudest jungle boasts 

A tusk of half the size. 
io8 



The Ivory Crucifix 



A monk obtained and to his cell 

The relic rare conveyed, 
And bending o'er the uncouth block 

This monk, communing, said : 

" Be mine the happy task by day 

And through the midnight's gloom, 
To toil and still toil on until 
This shapeless mass assume 

" The form of Him who on the Cross 
For us poured forth His blood : 
Thus man shall ever venerate 
This relic of the flood. 

" Though now a witness to the wrath 
Of the dread God above. 
Changed by my chisel, it shall be 
The emblem of His love." 



II 



That night when on his pallet stretched. 

As slumber o'er him stole, 
A glorious vision brightly broke 

Upon his ravished soul. 
109 



The Ivory Crucifix 



He sees his dear Redeemer stand 
On Calvary's sacred height, 

The Crucifixion is renewed 
Before his awe-struck sight. 

He sees his Saviour's pallid cheek 
With pitying tears impearled. 

He hears His dying accents bless 
A persecuting world : 

Sees the last look of love supreme 
Conquer each aching sense, 

Triumphant o'er His agony 
In deep benevolence. 



Ill 



The matin bell has pealed — the monk 
Starts from his brief repose ; 

But still before his waking eye 
The vivid dream arose. 

His morning orisons are paid, 
His hand the chisel wields. 

Slowly before the eager steel 
The stubborn ivory yields, 
no 



The Ivory Crucifix 



The ancient block is crusted o'er 
With a coating hard and gray, 

But soon the busy chisel dofFs 
This mantle of decay. 

And now, from every blemish freed. 

Upon his kindling eye. 
In all its pristine beauty, dawns 

The milk-white ivory. 



IV 



The sun arose, the sun went down. 

Arose and set again. 
But still the monk his chisel plies — 

Oh, must he toil in vain ? 

Not his the highly cultured touch 
That bade the marble glow 

And with a hundred statues linked 
The name of Angelo. 

Perchance some tiny image he 
Had fashioned oft before, 

But art had ne'er to him unveiled 
Her closely hoarded lore. 
I II 



The Ivory Crucifix 



A faithful hand, an eye possessed 
Of genius' inborn beam 

Or inspiration's loftier light 
Must body forth his dream. 



The moon has filled her fickle orb, 
The moon is on the wane, 

A crescent now she sails the sky 
And now is full again. 

But bending o'er that ivory block 
The monk is kneeling there, 

Full half his time to toil is given. 
And half is spent in prayer. 

Four years elapsed before the monk 
Threw his worn chisel by ; 

Complete at last before him lies 
The living ivory. 

His dream at last is bodied forth, 
And to the world is given 

A sight that well may wean the soul 
From earth a while to heaven. 
112 



The Ivory Crucifix 



The dying look of love supreme 
Conquering each aching sense, 

Unquenched by burning pain, reveals 
Divine benevolence. 

Behold that violated cheek 
With pitying tears impearled, 

The parting lips that seem to bless 
A persecuting world. 

Is not the Evangel's sacred page 

Translated here as well 
As any human alphabet 

Its glorious truths can tell ? 



"3 



Touth 



YOUTH 

MY swift bright youth where art thou 
now, 
With thy ready smile and open brow, 
With sleepless day and dreamless night, 
And hope that even through tears shone 
bright — 

Ah, whither hast thou flown ? 
Like foam of the ocean, 
An instant in motion. 

Then scattered and gone ! 

My brow, there 's not a furrow there, 
The first frost has not blanched my hair, 
These eyes — as clear as when they won 
From love a language of their own. — 

Then what has happened, say. 
Thou star of the daytime. 
Sweet youth, the soul's maytime, 
To drive thee away ? 
114 



Touth 



The bloom has left all beautiful things, 

The air-loving thoughts lose their shining wings, 

And Nature lieth dim and pale. 

Like the face of a corpse beneath a veil. 

And the heart within me is cold ; 
For the youth that I cherished 
Has fruitlessly perished 
Before I am old. 

My swift bright youth, my fair-haired slave, 
Thou hast left me but an early 'grave, — 
Wherever it be, — and when spring is green 
But one will be there, — she will weep, I ween, 
Speeding a prayer well meant. 
Oh, let not age meet me, 
With slow change to cheat me 
Of that lone monument ! 



115 



Absence 



ABSENCE 

A THOUSAND leagues away, 
Yet not an inch apart, 
' The ocean rolls between, 
But heart still touches heart. 
My head is on the billow, 

And thine is on the shore, 
Yet have we but one pillow. 
Love could not live with more. 

The carrier flutters onward. 

Still further from his nest. 
But thy shadow comes at sunset 

And links him with the west ; 
For the cord is only lengthened 

That bound me to thy side, 
And distance has but strengthened 

The love knot that we tied. 



n6 



Parting 



PARTING 

I HAD a friend and she was fair 
As Earth permits the soul to seem, 
Dark was her eye and dark her hair, 
Her glance broke o'er one like the dream 
That makes the sleeping infant smile, — 
So pure was she, so free from guile. 

When with her, all the golden day 
Flew swiftly on in radiant light, 

And her dear image, when away. 
Would seem to hover still in sight. 

For when the sun goes 'neath the hill 
Fond memory makes it twilight still. 

Thus hand in hand from year to year, 
From year to year thus heart in heart. 

Until 't was rapture to be near 
And agony to be apart. 

We wandered, — every day that passed 
Was brighter, lovelier than the last. 
117 



Parting 

One night a change crept o'er her brow — 

And lo ! an angel at my side 
Pale as a vestal at her vow 

She stood before me glorified. 
We parted at that sacred sign — 

Still mine — yet something more than mine. 



Ii8 



The Bridesmaids' Greeting 



THE BRIDESMAIDS' GREETING 

(From "Christine'') 

SISTER, Standing at Love's golden gate. 
Life's second door — 
Fleet the maiden-time is flying, 
Friendship fast in love is dying. 
Bridal fate doth separate 
Friends evermore. 

Pilgrim, seeking with thy sandalled feet 
The land of bliss ; 
Sire and sister tearless leaving, 
To thy beckoning palmer cleaving — 
Truant sweet, lest we ne'er meet ^ 
One parting kiss. 

Wanderer, filling for enchanted isle 
Thy dimpUng sail \ 
Whither drifted all uncaring 
So with faithful helmsman faring. 
Stay and smile with us awhile 
Before the gale. 
119 



The Bridesmaids' Greeting 

Playmate, hark ! a thousand thronging hours 
Old secrets tell : 
Vale and thicket, hill and heather, 
Whisper sacredly together ; 
Queen of ours, the very flowers 
Sigh forth farewell. 



120 



The Bride s Reply 



THE BRIDE'S REPLY 

(From *< Christine") 

BRING me no rose-wreath now : 
But come when sunset's first tears 
fall, 

When night-birds from the mountain call 

Then bind my brow. 

Roses and lilies white — 
But tarry till the glow-worms trail 
Their gold-work o'er the spangled veil 

Of falling night. 

Twine not your garland fair 
Till I have fallen fast asleep ; 
Then to my silent pillow creep 

And leave it there — 

There in the chapel yard, 
Come with the twilight's earliest hush, 
Just as the day's last purple flush 

Forsakes the sward. 

121 



The Bride s Reply 



Stop where the white cross stands 
You '11 find me in my wedding suit, 
Lying motionless and mute 

With folded hands. 

Tenderly to my side, 
The bridegroom's form you may not see 
In the dim eve, but he will be 

Fast by his bride. 

Soft with your chaplet move. 
And lightly lay it on my head : 
Be sure you wake not with rude tread 

My jealous love. 

Kiss me, then quick away ; 
And leave us in unwatched repose. 
There with the lily and the rose 

Waiting for day. 



122 



The Knighf s Lament for His Steed 



THE KNIGHT'S LAMENT FOR 
HIS STEED 

(From *' Christine") 

j4 ND art thou, art thou dead ? 

/ ^ Thou with front that might defy 
-^ -J^ The gathered thunders of the sky, 
Thou before whose fearless eye 

All death and danger fled! 

My Khalif, hast thou sped 
Homeward where the palm trees' feet 
Bathe in hidden fountains sweet. 
Where first we met as lovers meet, 

My own, my desert bred ! 

Thy back has been my home; 
And, bending o'er-thy flying neck, 
Its white mane waving without speck, 
I seemed to tread the galley's deck 

And cleave the Ocean's foam. 
123 



The Knighfs La??ient for His Steed 

Since first I felt thy heart 
Proudly surging 'neath my knee, 
As earthquakes heave beneath the sea, 
Brothers in the field were we ; 

And must we, can we part ? 



And shall I never more 
Answer thy laugh amid the clash 
Of battle, see thee meet the flash 
Of spears with the proud, pauseless dash 

Of billows on the shore ? 



For all our victor war. 
And all the honors men call mine 
Were thine, thou voiceless warrior, thine ; 
My task was but to touch the rein — 

There needed nothing more. 



Worst danger had no sting 
For thee, and coward p^ace no charm. 
Amid red havoc's worst alarm 
Thy swoop as firm as through the storm 

The eagle's iron wing. 
124 



The Knight's Lament for His Steed 



more than man to me ! 

Thy neigh outsoared the trumpet's tone, 
Thy back was better than a throne, 
There was no human thing save one 

1 loved as well as thee ! 



O Knighthood's truest friend ! 
Brave heart by every danger tried. 
Proud crest by conquest glorified. 
Swift Saviour of my menaced bride. 

Is this, is this the end ? 



Thrice honored be thy grave ! 
Wherever knightly deed is sung. 
Wherever minstrel harp is strung, 
There too thy praise shall sound among 

The beauteous and the brave. 



And thou shalt slumber deep 
Beneath our chapel's cypress sheen. 
And there thy lord and his Christine 
Full oft shall watch at morn and e'en 

Around their Khalif's sleep. 
125 



The Knighf s Lament for His Steed 

There shalt thou wait for me 
Until the funeral bell shall ring, 
Until the funeral censer swing, 
For I would ride to meet my King, 

My stainless steed, with thee ! 



126 



Forty To-day 



FORTY TO-DAY 

FORTY to-day ! 
Sweet Leman shimmering in the sun, as 
blue 
As calm, as pure as if the Heaven o'erhead 
That meets it 'mid the mist, just out of view, 
Had fallen and floated shoreward ! Am I 
dead ? 
Can I not pray ? 

This terraced slope 
Shaded and flowered — round the circling shore 

The Sabbath anthem swelling — all the air 

Trembling to distant bells — boat, sail, and 

oar 

All fast asleep . . . and I? ... Is this despair, 

Or higher hope ? 

127 



Forty To-day 



From poplar groves 
Set where the mountain and the meadow meet, 
Soar the sad Alps, dark verdure to the 
waist. 
Then clouds and riven rock. O ancient feet, 
At which doomed beauty crouches fast em- 
braced, 

Have ye your loves ! 



Forty to-day ! 
Through manhood's second Gate I pass and 
leave 
Behind me — ashes . . . neither flower nor 
fruit 
Of all the past . . . not e'en the grace to 
grieve 
For being empty-handed ! . . . I were mute 
But that this lay 

Will force its way 
Out of the frozen soul and visit Earth 

To tell the listening glens and startled plain 
How a chance sunbeam in its fiery mirth 

Turned an old Glacier's heart to sudden 
rain 

For very play : 
128 



Forty To-day 



Or, like the string 
Athwart the window of a vacant home 

Struck by the May wind, making music 
where 
No footstep falls ! My doom is still to roam 
While Alps stand fast with Leman nestling 
near ! . . . 

O weary wing 

Forever fold ! 
Upon the treetop build, or lower down 

Among the wild flowers seek a surer nest ; 
Forbear the Ocean's foam, the Tempest's 
frown, 
Be done with dreaming, — fold, and feebly 
rest 

Among the old. 

Thy days are done ! 
Think not to snare the joy that foiled thy 
grasp 
When youth and God were with thee — 
when thy acts 
Deserved the crown that came not. . . . Meekly 
clasp 
The present with its plain, perpetual facts. . . 
Thy race is run ! 
9 129 



SONGS 



SONGS 

BILL AND I 

THE moon had just gone down, 
sir. 
But the stars lit up the sky ; 
All was still in tent and town, sir. 

Not a rebel could we spy : 
It was our turn at picket, 
So we marched into the thicket 
To the music of the cricket 
Chirping nigh. 

Oh ! we kept a sharp lookout, sir. 
But no danger could we spy. 

And no rebel being about, sir. 
We sat down there by and by ; 

And we watched the brook a brawlin', 

And counted stars a fallin'. 

Old memories overhaulin'. 
Bill and I. 



Bill and I 



And says he, " Won't it be glorious 

When we fling our muskets by. 
And home again victorious 

We hear our sweethearts cry 
' Welcome back ! ' "— 

A step ! Who goes there ? 
A shot — by heaven, the foe 's there ! 
Bill sat there, all composure. 
But not L 

By the red light of his gun, sir, 

I marked the rebel spy : 
In an instant it was done, sir, 

I had fired and heard a cry. 
I sprang across the stream, sir. 
Oh ! it seems just like a dream, sir. 
The dizzy, dying gleam, sir, 
Of that eye ! 

A youth, a very boy, sir, 

I saw before me lie ; 
Some pretty school-girl's toy, sir. 

Had ventured there to die. 
We had hated one another, 
But I heard him murmur ^^ Mother ! " — 
So I stooped and called him '-^Brother ! " 
No reply. 



Bill and I 



I crossed the stream on-ce more, sir, 

To see why Bill war n't by j 
He was sittin' as before, sir. 

But a film was o'er his eye ; 
I scarce knew what it meant, sir, 
Till a wail broke from our tent, sir. 
As into camp we went, sir. 
Bill and I. 



135 



Fidelis 



FIDELIS 

A MAIDEN stood by a shining stream, 
Sing tarry, tarry j 
Her eye was rapt in a sweet, sweet 
dream, 
Ay, marry, marry. 
A suitor bold rode merrily by, 

" Dream on," quoth he, " you will wake one 
day ! 
So my hounds shall hunt and my falcon fly. 
Away ! Away ! " 

A Ladye sat by a clouded stream, 

Sing tarry, tarry ; 
Her heart still true to its first sweet dream. 

Ay, marry, marry. 
A Baron rode up with hawk and hound, 

" Well, mistress mine, do you still say nay ? 
Come ! my lance is sure and my steed is sound. 
Away ! Away ! " 
136 



Fidelis 



A Mourner knelt by a frozen stream, 

Sing tarry, tarry ; 
Her hair all white with a snowy gleam, 

Ay, marry, marry. 
Once more to her side the Baron came 

With hawk in hand, though his beard was 
gray; 
But her maiden dream was still the same. 
Away ! Away ! 



137 



Lady Bird 



LADY BI RD 

LADY BIRD, Lady Bird, 
Are you looking for a nest? 
You may choose around my 
mansion 
Any spot that suits you best. 
'Neath the trellis in the garden 

There 's a shadow steeped in dew, 
Neath the linden by the grotto 
There 's another out of view. 

Lady Bird, Lady Bird, 

Will you ever keep away ? 
Just so near, but never nearer. 

Just to-day where yesterday ; 
While to me, with every moment 

You have dearer, dearer grown, 
Till at last, in all the valleys. 

There 's no music but your own. 

138 



Lady Bird 



Lady Bird, Lady Bird, 

I have paid you song for song ; 
Not for all the sun shines over 

Would I stoop to do you wrong. 
Wing of gold and voice of silver, 

Fly away forever free. 
Or teach others half the music 

That you might have made for me. 



139 



Oh! The Tear has Lost its Light 



OH! THE YEAR HAS LOST 
ITS LIGHT 

OH ! the year has lost its light, 
Summer sun 's no longer 
bright, 
Autumn drear and winter night, 

Spring returns in vain : 
Morn and eve must come and fly. 
Month and year must still go by, 
But the love-light of her eye 
I ne'er shall see again. 

Oh ! the pale moon overhead 
Feebly seeks her fleecy bed. 
And the stars are dim and dead. 

Voiceless is the sky : 
All the future must be sold. 
All the past remain untold, 
Till the weary heart is cold — 

Then for eternity ! 



140 



Gabriel's Song 



GABRIEL'S SONG 

(From " Loretto") 

I HEAR a sweet voice like the voice of a 
bird, 
The softest and sweetest that ever was 
heard ; 
And it comes from the sky, from the blue, 

blessed sky, 
And it warbles, " Prepare, for the hour is nigh ; '* 
And that voice is meant for me. 
Far, far away. 
Ere another day. 
Shall I be ! 

I see two sweet wings that are not of the earth. 
That shall bear me aloft to the land of my birth. 
Two glittering wings of the purest white. 
With each feather enshrined in a circle of light ; 
And those wings are meant for me. 
Far, far away, 
Ere another day. 
Shall I be ! 
141 



GabrteV s Song 



the blossoming stars were my playmates of 

yore, 

1 shall skim the loved fields where I 've sported 

before, 
And I know a bright spot where the angels are, 
That is high above the highest star ; 
And that spot is meant for me. 
Far, far away. 
Ere another day. 
Shall I be ! 



142 



A Lullaby 



A LULLABY 

SLEEP, my child, and when I slumber. 
Do not wake and weep, 
Another mother comes from heaven 
To watch thee when I sleep. 
Though perchance thou mayst not see her 

She will still be nigh. 
For she loves thee dearly, truly. 
Better e'en than I. 

Sleep, my child, thy heavenly mother 

Hath no need of rest. 
And ever with the night she cometh 

To take thee to her breast. 
Thus in joy and trust I slumber 

When the day is done. 
For this mother's name is Mary, 

Jesus is her Son. 



143 



^' Contraband Now 



"CONTRABAND NOW" 

(Southern Negro Melody of the Civil War — 1864. 
Words and Music by George H. Miles) 

UNCLE SAMBO'S a gwine to be 
righted, 
Uncle Sambo 's a gwine to be free, 
And dey say dat dis darkey 's delighted 

Becos you white folks can't agree ; 
O dey say dat dis darkey 's in clober, 
But 'deed I don't see it nohow ; 
Uncle Sambo's best days are all ober, 
He 's only a Contraband now ! 

CHORUS 

O dey say dat dis darkey 's in clober, 
But 'deed I don't see it nohow ; 

Uncle Sambo's best days are all ober. 
He 's only a Contraband now ! 

Uncle Sambo's best days are all ober. 
He 's only a Contraband now ! 
144 



" Contraband Now " 



dey say dis Fremount proclamation 

Hab kick up de best sort ob fun, 
But much as I lub 'mancipation, 

I rader you two should stay one. 
Mighty pleasant to vote wid our betters. 

And pray wid white breddren, but yet, 

1 'd rader go back to my fetters 

Dan see dis old Union upset. 

CHORUS 



I 'd rader go back to plantation 

And stick to de cotton and cane, 
Dan dat Gin'ral Washington's nation 

Should all hab been built up in vain. 
O dey say wen de fightin 's all ober, 

Nary slave will be left in de land. 
But if dey fight on, by Jehober, 

Dey '11 leave nary freeman on hand. 

CHORUS 



De last time I seen my old Massa 

He 'd just bid old Missus good-bye ; 

His hand was right wet, for, I dar say, 

He 'd just brushed a tear from his eye 
lo 145 



" Contraband Now " 



One foot in his shiny steel stirrup, 

One hand on de mane ob his Black, 

He stammered out, — " Boys, you must cheer up 
Old Missus, if I don't git back." 

CHORUS 

Old Missus de last time I met her 

Dat sight made me feel berry sore. 
She leanin' agin de Palmetter, 

He gallopin' on to de war : 
She went in and watched by de windo' 

As long as his boss she could see, 
Den turned, wid a strange larf, and kindo' 

Staggered and came to her knee. 

CHORUS 

May n't Massa and Missus drop in here 

Wen somebody settles dis war, 
May n't de banjo ob dear old Virginier 

Be as sweet to New York as before ? 
O dey say dat dis darkey 's in clober, 

But 'deed I don't see it nohow ; 
Uncle Sambo's best days are all ober, 

He 's only a Contraband now. 
Uncle Sambo's best days are all ober, 

He 's only a Contraband now. 



146 



God Save the South ! 



GOD SAVE THE SOUTH! 

(Southern Anthem of the Civil War — 1863) 

GOD save the South, 
God save the South, 
Her altars and firesides, 
God save the South ! 
For the great war is nigh, 
And we will win or die. 
Chanting our battle-cry. 
Freedom or death ! 

God be our shield, 

At home or afield, 
Stretch thine arm over us. 

Strengthen and save. 
What tho' they 're three to one, 
Forward each sire and son. 
Strike till the war is won. 

Strike to the grave ! 
147 



God Save the South I 



God make the right 

Stronger than might ; 
Millions would trample us 

Down in their pride. 
Lay thou their legions low. 
Roll back the ruthless foe. 
Let the proud spoiler know, 

God 's on our side. 

Hark honor's call. 

Summoning all. 
Summoning all of us 

Unto the strife. 
Sons of the South, awake ! 
Strike till the brand shall break, 
Strike for dear Honor's sake. 

Freedom and Life ! 

Rebels before 

Our fathers of yore. 
Rebel the righteous name 

Washington bore. 
So, then, be ours the same. 
Name that he snatch'd from shame. 
Making it first in fame. 

Foremost in war. 
148 



God Save the South ! 



War to the hilt, 

Theirs be the guilt, 
Who fetter the freeman 

To ransom the slave. 
Up, then, and undismayM, 
Sheathe not the battle blade 
Till the last foe is laid 

Low in the grave ! 

God save the South, 

God save the South, 
Dry the dim eyes that now 

Follow our path. 
Still let the light feet rove 
Safe through the orange grove ; 
Still keep the land we love 

Safe from Thy wrath. 



149 



Where is the Freeman Found? 



WHERE IS THE FREEMAN 
FOUND? 

(Southern Battle Song and March of the Civil War — 1863) 

WHERE is the Freeman found, 
When tyrants his home invade ? 
Where is the holiest ground 
When despots our hearths degrade ? 

Here at the cannon's mouth, 
On the red field. 

Where the bayonet gleams, 
And our young banner streams 
Over men who have sworn not to yield ! 

CHORUS 

Come, Brothers, Brothers, come. 
Come to the cannon's mouth ! 

There is your only home. 

Men of the sunny South. 

150 



Where is the Freeman Found'? 

Quick be the last kiss giv'n, 

Stay not for bridal vow — 
Sweet Peace has fled to Heav'n, 

War is our watchword now ; 
Then to the battlefield 

All who are men, 
And, with steel flashing forth. 
Give our friends of the North 

The greeting of Bethel again. 

CHORUS 

Lo, how their legions throng 

Back to the fields they fled ! 
Say, shall they linger long 

Lords of our laurelled dead ? 
No, hurl the hireling back, 

Back to his den ! 
And, sabre in hand, 
March the foe from the land 

To the quickstep of Bull Run again. 

CHORUS 

Ever since time began. 

Freedom her banner rears 
Red with the blood of man. 

Radiant with woman's tears. 
Then to the battlefield 

All who are men ; 
151 



Where is the Freeman Found'? 

To the roll of our drums 
Meet the foe as he comes 

With the music of Ball's BlufF again. 

CHORUS 

Round them the vulture keeps 

Haunting their gory path, 
Over them frowning sweeps 

God with his gathered wrath ! 
Then to the battlefield 

All who are men ; 
By the dead we have lost, 
Let them feel to their cost, 

The vengeance of Shiloh again! 

CHORUS 

Maidens with torches lit 

Stand by our goods and gear. 
Wives with their wan brows knit. 

Wait with the dagger bare; 
Then to the battlefield. 

All who are men ; 
We have graves still to spare, 
As they '11 find, if they dare 

Try the " Onward to Richmond " again ! 

CHORUS 



152 



The Devil's Visit To — 



THE DEVIL'S VISIT TO 



T 



HE Devil told the damned, one day. 
To take some recreation. 

For he had a visit of State to pay 
To a certain Corporation. 



So he tucked up his tail and combed his hail. 

And went to a certain town. 
And says he, " Mister Mayor, it 's pretty clear 
That my friend, the Plague, is coming here." 

"Pretty clear," says the Mayor; "sit 
down." 

The Devil sat down. « My good sir," says he, 
" Your streets are as dirty as dirty can be." 

Here the Mayor gave a wink and said 
" Well ? " 
And the Devil resumed, "Don't disturb the 

repose 
Of the mud whose aroma is sweet as the rose. 
And — I '11 soften your pillow in Hell ! " 
153 



The DeviPs Visit To — 



The bargain was struck, and the Devil made 

Haste back to his old domain ; 
While the Mayor, grinning, said, " Tho' I'm 

half afraid 
To stir a scraper or lift a spade, — 

I think I may pra^ for a rain." 



The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



MAY 15 1907 



